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Taipei, Taiwan Since Russia invaded Ukraine, Taiwans security has been on the lips of policymakers and analysts the world over, amid predictions China could one day follow Moscows lead and attempt to take over the island nation.

Both Taiwan and Ukraine are young democracies, whose national identity and political independence face the threat of aggression from a neighbouring superpower.

Taiwan, however, has a little-discussed secret weapon that Ukraine did not have a dominance in manufacturing semiconductors that some analysts say could prove crucial in deterring an invasion by Beijing.

An invasion of Taiwan could trigger unprecedented global economic fallout due to the islands position as arguably the most vulnerable single point of failure in the technology value chain.

Taipeis silicon shield makes the stakes especially high for China. While Chinese President Xi Jinping has pledged to reclaim the self-ruled island by force if necessary, Beijing relies heavily on Taiwanese technology to power key industries that it is banking on to double its gross domestic product (GDP) by 2035.

Taiwans integrated deterrence strategy must keep this stark choice between national objectives for Beijing clear, Jared McKinney, a scholar at Air University, told Al Jazeera. Either conquer Taiwan or maintain economic prosperity.

A question delayed is an invasion denied, McKinney said.

Taiwan accounts for 92 percent of global production for semiconductor process nodes below 10 nanometres (1 nanometre is one-billionth of a metre), making it the main supplier of the vast majority of chips that power the worlds most advanced machines, from Apple iPhones to F-35 fighter jets.

A one-year disruption to the Taiwanese chip supply alone would cost global tech companies roughly $600bn, according to a study by the Boston Consulting Group. In the event its manufacturing base was destroyed in a war, rebuilding production capacity elsewhere would take at least three years and $350bn, the study found.

China is good at algorithms, software, and market solutions, Ray Yang, a consulting director at Taiwans Industrial Technology Research Institute, told Al Jazeera. But their industry needs many high-performance computer (HPC) chips that they do not have.

If a conflict interrupted their supply, it would dramatically slow down Chinas AI and 6G ambitions, Yang said. They would have to reorder their entire industrial strategy.

That dependence could be further exploited by Taipei to buttress its national security, according to some military analysts.

McKinney, who stressed his views do not necessarily represent those of Air University or the US Air Force, said Taiwans silicon shield should be less a commitment device for American defence than a deterrent against Chinese aggression.

Last year McKinney and Peter Harris, an associate professor of political science at Colorado State University, published a paper on a broken nest strategy for deterring China. They proposed Taiwan could credibly threaten to destroy industry leader TSMCs infrastructure at the onset of an invasion, which would deny Beijing access to its chips and inflict serious damage to its economy.

McKinney said deterrence could be boosted further by instituting a multilateral semiconductor sanctions regime whereby the United States, South Korea, and Japan joined with Taiwan to halt semiconductor exports to China if it started a war.

If the ask is to sanction the whole Chinese economy, you might not get enough buy-in, he said, expressing doubt that conglomerates with deep exposure to Chinas market would pull out.

The comparatively modest scope of semiconductor sanctions makes them more credible as a deterrent, making it a warning signal Chinese policymakers cant ignore.

Though China remains dependent on Taiwanese tech for now, it is working hard to turn the tables amid allegations of talent poaching and intellectual property theft. Taiwan bans Chinese-funded companies from investing in high-end technology and those who violate incoming economic espionage laws could spend up to 12 years behind bars. Last month, Taiwan raided eight Chinese tech companies and interrogated 60 Chinese scouts who were allegedly trying to poach Taiwans top engineers.

The biggest threat to Taiwans continued technological dominance is talent poaching from mainland China, James Lee, an expert on US-Taiwan relations who will take up an academic post with Taiwans Academia Sinica later this year, told Al Jazeera.

So far, it [China] hasnt succeeded for high-end chips but it is plausible that they may succeed at some point, and given the sheer amount of resources that Beijing has at its disposal, Taiwans going to be under constant pressure.

Ross Feingold, a Taipei-based lawyer, told Al Jazeera IP theft is a particular concern.

Due to drawn-out court proceedings and slight penalties, the law does not inspire enough fear to deter individuals from routinely stealing trade secrets or insider information from firms, Feingold said.

However, Yang does not see this as a big worry for leading firms like TSMC.

They are very smart and have a very sophisticated system to protect their most sensitive information, he said.

Taiwans tech dominance affects Washingtons risk calculus, too. The US has no defence treaty with Taiwan, while the debate is heating up in Washington over whether it should maintain its long-held policy of strategic ambiguity or switch to strategic clarity.

I see US technological dependency on Taiwan as an effective and even preferable substitute to a policy of strategic clarity, Lee said.

It locks the United States into defending Taiwan to protect the islands semiconductor industry, but it doesnt mean that the United States is treating Taiwan as an ally or supporting Taiwans independence.

Yet, with Washington investing $52bn into reshoring chip manufacturing and homegrown hero Intel edging to become the worlds most advanced chipmaker again, the US may not be technologically dependent on Taiwan for long.

If the United States started manufacturing the worlds most advanced chips, that would make Taiwan less important to the United States and would consequently make the US less likely to defend Taiwan, but that is still very much a theoretical scenario, Lee said.

Intel might be able to reach this tier of elite manufacturers if there is substantial public and private investment in the United States over the course of the next 10-20 years, but even if that happens, its not likely to displace TSMC altogether.

Even if Intel catches up technologically, there is no guarantee industry players will not still prefer TSMC.

This is what Intel needs to deal with, Yang said. TSMC is fully trusted by its international partners since [unlike Intel] it does not have its own product and does not compete with them.

Global semiconductor making concentrated on the island thanks to three decades of globalisation that prioritised low costs and economies of scale. But now de-globalisation is very much under way as industrial and national leaders worldwide wake up to the reality of black swan events.

Adjusting to the new reality of supply chain vulnerability, leading firms are moving process capacity outside of Taiwan. TSMC will kick-start the construction of semiconductor fabrication plants in Arizona and Japans Kumamoto in 2024. Taiwans UMC, the worlds third-largest chipmaker, is due to open a plant in Singapore the same year.

Yang believes international firms that previously saved by offshoring manufacturing will seek to offset the costs of reshoring through technical breakthroughs that will be achieved with the assistance of Taiwan.

More and more players from up and down the supply chain are coming and setting up here to get closer to Taiwans ecosystem, be it Dutch lithographic equipment makers, Japanese chemical suppliers, and others, he said.

Taiwan will still lead the whole ecosystem because international players need to join with us to innovate the next generation of chips.

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Taiwans silicon shield: Why island may not be the next Ukraine - Al Jazeera English

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Lawrence: No-fly fantasy in Ukraine

Large shipments of Western weapons continue to flow into Ukraine as Russias invasion enters its fourth week.

President Joe Biden announced an additional $800 million in new security aid to Ukraine on Thursday, hours after Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyys address to Congress. The U.S. weapons package to Ukraine will include eight hundred Stinger anti-aircraft systems, twenty million rounds of ammunition, 7,000 light weapons, 9,000 anti-armor systems, and one hundred drones.

"These are direct transfers of equipment from our Department of Defense to the Ukrainian military to help them as they fight against this invasion, Biden said.

Biden singled out the anti-aircraft weapons in the aid package. He also said the United States is helping Ukraine acquire additional longer-range anti-aircraft systems and the munitions for those systems.

One possibility could be transferring long-range S-300 surface-to-air missile systems to Ukraine.

"These S-300s and longer-range artillery forces is what will help close the sky over Ukraine, said Gregory Meeks, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. "President Zelensky is not asking for American troops or American equipment or anything of that nature to close the skies. What he's asking for is the artillery that will do that. The S-300 may be the one that does that.

CNN reported that Slovakia is considering giving Ukraine an S-300 system, but wants assurances that the weapon will be replaced immediately with a system of similar capabilities. Negotiations are reportedly underway to backfill Slovakias missile defense capabilities with a U.S.-made Patriot missile system, but the current status of those talks remains unclear. Slovakia is one of only three NATO members to possess the Soviet-era S-300, with the others being Bulgaria and Greece.

"I want to be honest with you. This could be a long and difficult battle, Biden said. But the American people will be steadfast in our support of the people of Ukraine, in the face of Putin's immoral, unethical attacks on civilian populations.

British defense minister Ben Wallace said to the BBC on Wednesday that Britain is supplying Starstreak man-portable air-defense systems (MANPADS) to Ukraine. Wallace told U.K. lawmakers last week that London is considering delivering Starstreak systems to Ukraine, noting certain logistical challenges that include training.

Other forms of military aid to Kiev remain off the table for now. The Biden administration has declined proposals to transfer MiG-29 jet fighters from Poland to Ukraine, with U.S. defense officials claiming that the Ukrainian military is currently not in need of more aircraft and that they can fight more effectively with their western-supplied man-portable missiles. Leaders in Washington and other NATO countries have likewise repeatedly rejected Zelenskyys continued calls for a Western-imposed no-fly zone in Ukrainian airspace, describing the measure as a needlessly risky and escalatory step.

Mark Episkopos is a national security reporter for The National Interest.

Image: Reuters.

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United States, NATO Allies Sending Additional Weapons to ...

Ukraine has been an independent country for more than half Vladimir Putins adult life (he turns 70 this year). Its been a free republic for more than 30 years, long enough for the first generation of Ukrainians born since independence to have school-age children of their own. Its had seven different leaders, all of them still alive.

It would be sentimental and patronising to talk about a country having grown up. But 30 years is long enough for countries to change, for better or for worse; long enough for countries to have eras. Ukraine was well into its second era, its European era, when Putin invaded last month. Putin never accepted the right of post-Soviet Ukraine to exist in independent Ukraines first era. In terms of understanding the country, thats the period hes stuck in; Putin doesnt acknowledge that a second era began.

The west shares many of the Kremlins misapprehensions about Ukraine. We are still too ready to see the country through the cliche of a nationalist, Ukrainian-speaking west and a Russia-friendly, Russian-speaking south and east. Or, more crudely and colourfully, neo-communist miners in the east, neo-Nazis in the west. Of course it was never that simple, even in post-Soviet Ukraine. But European-era Ukraine, which emerged in 2014, overturned its own political fundamentals. Faced with an existential struggle against a powerful, ruthless neighbour, Russia, where nationalism now serves autocracy, an emergent class of Ukrainian liberals made common cause with Ukrainian nationalists. Its been an uncomfortable alliance but it has kept the country together. As Ukraine defends itself against Putins terror campaign, mutually estranged liberals and nationalists in other countries the US, England, France would do well to watch.

To talk about European Ukraine isnt to describe an achieved state but a state of hope: hope of membership in the European Union more meaningful to Ukraine, at least until Russia attacked, than membership of Nato.

Ukraines hope of Europe had its material side, a hope of grants, jobs and trade. Since the revolution of dignity also known as Maidan in 2014, trade with the EU soared while trade with Russia plunged. More than a million Ukrainians went to work, legally or otherwise, in the EU. Since Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February, much has been made in Britain of the EUs openness to Ukrainian refugees compared with the barriers put up by London. But its a depressing reflection of how mainstream anti-immigrant assumptions have become in the UK that virtually no one in Britain is aware the EU gave Ukrainians visa-free access years ago, as a reward for their countrys sacrifices in Europes name. Since 2017, as a result of that and of Brexit, Ukrainians have levelled up and Britons levelled down to identical rights of EU entry: 90 days stay without a visa.

Beyond the material hopes of European-era Ukraine, there is the prospect, less tangible and more powerful, of an alternative form of nationhood. Rather than the archaic, romantic, racial mystifications of old Ukrainian nationalism, or Putins neo-imperial vision of Ukraine pulverised and remade as a puppet state to serve Russian nationalism, its of Ukraine pursuing its free course as an equal member of a self-constraining, self-governing association of countries, the EU.

The beauty of the EU, for Ukraine, is the capaciousness of its model for both liberals and nationalists. In some ways, the aims of European-era Ukraine closely resemble those of the Scottish National party and the Irish republic: to use the economic power of the EU to leverage their own, to break out of the orbit of a delusional post-imperial culture, to find national self-determination by accepting multinational rules. As Tom Nairn wrote of Scotland, a country could aspire to a new interdependence where our nationhood will count, rather than towards mere isolation.

For Ukraines more conservative nationalists, its Poland and Hungary that offer the more appealing EU models stridently patriotic, subordinating media, courts and education to national ideals and social conservatism, all while getting subsidies and trading freely within the EU.

The prelude to Ukraines European era occurred in 2013 under president Viktor Yanukovych, a profoundly corrupt politician from the east of the country. Although seen as a proxy for Kremlin interests, and generally loyal to the idea of post-Soviet Ukraine as a Russian client state, he threw his weight behind an association agreement with the EU. He had his country on side, but Putin gave it to be understood that he considered it a betrayal Ukraine could partner with the EU or Russia, not both.

Whether Yanukovych was genuinely up for the deal with Brussels, or simply angling for a bigger bung from Moscow, he changed his mind at the last minute, took a large loan from Putin and turned his back on the EU.

It was November. Protests began in Kyiv against abandonment of the EU deal. There were calls for Yanukovych to resign. Small, peaceful protests were put down violently by the police. Parliament, then controlled by Yanukovych allies, passed repressive laws against free speech and gatherings. As 2013 passed into 2014, the protests grew, their demands expanded and their base spread. Opposition to Yanukovych and calls for deeper ties to Europe evolved into attacks on the entire corrupt, oligarchic system of business and government.

Young members of the liberal intelligentsia were joined by radical nationalist groups, by small-business owners and by factory workers. Opposition MPs aligned themselves with the protesters. Increasingly violent street battles were waged around Kyivs central square, Maidan Nezalezhnosti. Barricades went up. Weapons escalated from clubs and stones and shields to molotov cocktails, to stun grenades and rubber bullets, to actual bullets. Some police were shot; more than 100 protesters were killed.

In the third week of February, for reasons still mysterious perhaps because the security forces ceased to believe in the president the regime collapsed. European foreign ministers brokered a peace deal with Yanukovych, the Maidan crowd refused to accept it, and Yanukovych fled the country. Parliament voted in an interim government and prepared for new elections.

Barely had the revolutionaries victory sunk in before Russia annexed Crimea in a nearly bloodless coup de main. In Yanukovychs home region of Donbas, on the border with Russia, locals angry at the treatment of their lawfully elected president seized administrative buildings. They were quickly ousted, only to be replaced, in April, by a new wave of rebels helped by volunteers from Russia. Fighting escalated to a full-scale war, culminating in incursions by regular Russian troops. Thousands of people were killed. By 2015, the front lines had stabilised and fighting lessened, with part of Donbas under joint Russian-rebel control. The rest of Ukraine was at peace. In 2017, the association agreement with the EU came into force.

Even before the war in the Donbas began, there were warnings of what the longer term held. In what reads now as an astonishingly accurate forecast of what was to come, in an interview with a Ukrainian paper in March 2014, the former Putin adviser Andrei Illarionov spelled it out, failing only to predict that eight years would pass first. Theres an aim and a plan to attack Ukraine which was put together years ago, he said. It has many different elements Crimea, the south-east and, of course, a change of power in Kyiv. And then there are other things: a new [Ukrainian] constitution, to be written in the Kremlin, disarmament of the Ukrainian people, liquidation of Maidan, and so on.

Liquidation of Maidan sounds different from the current Kremlin programme, until you realise this is simply denazification by another name.

It might seem trivial now, when Ukraine is on fire and hundreds are being killed every day, when all that seems important is how many Russian tanks and planes and soldiers the Ukrainians have to blow up to make Putin stop, to talk about abstractions like nationalism and liberalism. And yet without these forces coming together over the past seven years of semi-peace, would Ukraine have held out this long?

I remember being surprised, when I visited Kyiv at the end of February 2014, to see how focused liberals and nationalists alike were on a European future. The spokesman for one of the most notorious radical nationalist groups, Right Sector, talked to me about Poland as a model for the country. European flags were everywhere. I went for dinner one evening with a friend of a friend, a successful businesswoman. The Maidan was very localised; a huge encampment of brown tents crowded together, wreathed in the smoke of hundreds of stoves, in which exhausted people, who had fought nightly battles in freezing conditions, lived difficult lives away from home. But right next door to it were expensive restaurants with waiters in spotless white shirts serving fine wines and tuna carpaccio. You know, the nationalists were very important, said the businesswoman, sipping her grenache. They did very good work at the leading edge.

Ive always been in two minds about that conversation with someone who had been very kind to me. On the one hand, it had that air of somebody being grateful that somebody else was doing their dirty work; that one person had education, good taste and proper gentle sentiments, and they were grateful that their interests were being protected by another person who risked their life with a petrol bomb and a brick, and whose most conservative, chauvinist views the first person would definitely not want to hear at their dinner table in peacetime. On the other hand, my friends friend was being honest about the realities of a dangerous situation, and resistance towards a nasty, increasingly repressive regime: that she was not one of natures fighters, and she was glad to have people prepared to fight for their country on her side. Nationalist and liberal, after all, are words with an extremely broad range of meanings.

For me, national is what allows me to defend Ukraine as an independent, sovereign nation, said the Ukrainian philosopher Evhen Bistritsky in 2018, at a time when disillusionment with Ukraines post-Maidan failures to get to grips with corruption and institutional inertia was running deep.

I am a liberal, defending the independence of Ukraine. Part of Ukrainian society supports conservative values, linking them to security. If were really only going to preach universal, classical, liberal values we promote discord in the country.

In a country not fighting for its existence, in the US, perhaps, or Britain, or France, in some safe part of the EU, such language would have marked Bistritsky out as a centrist, a moderate, even, more pejoratively, an undemocratic compromiser. In the present Ukrainian context, faced with the Russian killing machine, discord becomes failure to fill the ranks.

Recently the Ukrainian writer Artem Chekh published Absolute Zero, his memoir of service in the Ukrainian army on the Donbas front in 2015. In it he faces up to the strangeness of being a liberal, cosmopolitan, intellectual man serving alongside workers and farmers who see the world in patriotic, if cynical, absolutes. I went around to his flat in Kyiv a few weeks ago for coffee and cake. Now he has taken up a gun again to protect the city against the invader. In an article for the London Review of Books blog, he lists his comrades: a music producer, an owner of a household chemicals store, a teacher, an artist, a bank clerk, a former investigator, a doctor. The ability to write, paint, act, play a musical instrument or dance doesnt matter now. What counts is military experience.

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The power of the new Ukraine - The Guardian

Today, Europe is experiencing its darkest hour since the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s. Russias all-out invasion of Ukraine put the continents future in serious jeopardy. Russian President Vladimir Putins exclusionary nationalism and imperial designs are now posing an immediate threat to the safety and wellbeing of not only those living in ex-Soviet nations in Russias vicinity but all Europeans.

Since the beginning of Moscows so-called special operation in Ukraine on February 24, it feels like Europe has had nothing but bad news: thousands of desperate refugees rushing towards borders to find safety in neighbouring nations, indiscriminate shelling of residential areas, children sheltering in tube stations and basements, even an attack on a maternity hospital.

But amid all this doom and gloom, there has also been a development that gave democratic-minded Europeans some hope for the future: the continents many far-right politicians, who have long been publicly singing the praises of Putin and his nationalism, entered into a scramble to quickly distance themselves from the Russian leader.

French far-right leader and presidential candidate Marine Le Pens party has reportedly destroyed more than a million campaign leaflets featuring a photograph of her with Putin. While Le Pen did not go as far as to publicly call Putin a dictator, she had to admit that his invasion of Ukraine was a clear violation of international law and absolutely indefensible.

And Le Pens past support for Putin and alleged financial ties to the Kremlin swiftly turned into a political Achilles heel as images of European misery and death caused by the Russian leader filled TV screens across the continent.

In early March, for example, the leader of Italys centre-left Democratic Party Enrico Letta scolded Le Pen at a televised debate saying, Your friends were Trump and Putin, one attacked the Capitol, the other bombed Ukraine. Your foreign policy is a failure. The rebuke swiftly went viral on social media, showing the difficult position Europes Putin-loving far-right politicians found themselves in after the invasion of Ukraine.

Le Pen, however, still managed to assume a contrarian stance on the European response to Putins aggression. While admitting that the invasion partially changed her opinion of Putin, she criticised the crippling sanctions the European Union imposed on Russia and claimed that they will hurt French peoples spending power.

I dont want gas prices to rise eightfold and oil prices to double. I dont want the French to commit hara-kiri, she said at a televised presidential debate, warning that the economic consequences of the war could be a hundred times worse than the pandemic.

This economy above all else stance resonated with her supporters, and allowed her to endure the massive wave of criticism she faced after the invasion of Ukraine.

The leader of Italys far-right League Party, Matteo Salvini, tried to approach his newfound Putin problem in a similar way. He spoke against Russias aggression, but refrained from labelling Putin who he publicly supported for years a dictator. When asked whether he would condemn the Russian leader, he merely said: Certainly, its obvious, we condemn the war, anyone would condemn the war and the aggression.

And like Le Pen, he also spoke against sanctions and said he believes any restrictions directed against Russia will also be harmful to Italian businesses.

Taking his damage control efforts much further than his French counterpart, Salvini also made a visit to the Polish city of Przemysl to demonstrate his support for Ukrainian refugees there. Of course, as someone who has at least twice worn a T-shirt with Putins face on it in public, Salvinis stunt in Poland was not welcomed by the local population.

I have a gift for you, Przemysls Mayor Wojciech Bakun told Salvini in front of cameras. Wed like to go with you to the border and to a refugee welcome centre to see what your friend Putin has done, what the person whom you describe as your friend, has done to these people, who are crossing the border to the tune of 50,000 per day. He then pulled out a T-shirt printed with a black-and-white image of Putin on the front and the words Army of Putin underneath a copy of a T-shirt Salvini was photographed wearing in 2014 in Moscows Red Square.

The Italian leader could do nothing other than walk away.

All in all, Putins unprovoked aggression against Ukraine had the unintended consequence of putting Europes far-right superstars on the back foot. While it is not possible to say they abandoned Putin as a role model completely (another French far-right presidential candidate, Eric Zemmour, for example, still stubbornly defends Putin despite condemning the invasion), they had to accept his brand of exclusionary nationalism leads to nothing but misery and destruction.

Anyone longing for a democratic, inclusive and peaceful Europe should count this as a win at a time when even the smallest of such victories are few and far between.

But we should also never forget that Putins supporters and enablers in Europe were not only far-right agitators like Le Pen and Salvini. Many so-called moderate politicians also had strong ties and good relations with the Russian autocrat.

Countless former Western MPs and ministers have been sitting on the boards of and offering consultancy services to Russian firms including former prime ministers of Finland, Italy and Austria. Italys former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi expressed his admiration for Putin regularly over the years. Germanys former Chancellor Gerhard Schroder too always had a close relationship with him. The former German leader, who is currently mediating to stop the war, has been widely criticised for refusing to abandon the seats he holds on the boards of Russian energy companies after the invasion of Ukraine.

In the United Kingdom and France, too many mainstream politicians have strong financial and political links to Putins Russia and as a result, have been soft on the Kremlins actions falling foul of local and international laws over the years.

Even British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who in the past few weeks emerged as one of Ukraines leading European allies in its war against Russia, is being criticised for his close relations with Moscows known operatives, and the donations his Conservative Party received from oligarchs with strong links to Putin.

Now, as far-right leaders across Europe are being forced to abandon their autocratic and nationalist role model, and being forced to explain why they supported him for so long, similar pressures should be put on mainstream politicians who also worked to whitewash Putin and his undemocratic regime for years.

The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial stance.

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The Russia-Ukraine war put Europes far right on the back foot - Al Jazeera English