The Iran War Has Exposed Taiwan’s Achilles’ Heel

In the event of a war with China, Taiwan has some surprisingly tough defenses that could make it as difficult to tackle as a porcupine: A shoreline dotted with swamps, rocks, and concrete barriers; conscription for all adult men; highways and airports that are built to double as hardened combat facilities.

This porcupine has a soft underbelly, though, and the war in Iran is exposing it: energy.

Some 39,000 ships dock at Taiwan’s ports each year, more than the 30,000 that transit the Strait of Hormuz. About a fifth of their inbound tonnage is coal, oil, refined fuels, and natural gas, which power 85% of the grid and 99% of its road fleet. The vast majority passes through a handful of ports, most facing the coast of mainland China as little as 130 kilometers away.

The conflict in the Middle East is showing how risky that is. Without setting foot on Taiwan’s shores, China could enforce a blockade similar to the one Tehran has been operating in the Strait. In a matter of weeks, that could black out power on the self-ruled island. After years of expansion, Beijing’s fleet is now large enough to cut off trade in raw materials, Taiwan’s latest four-yearly defense review concluded last year. 

“PLA forces would mine the approaches and the ports themselves, damage port facilities and the routes for onward movement of materiel, and sink or scuttle vessels in shipping channels,” Lonnie Henley, a former US intelligence officer focused on Asian security, wrote in a 2023 study of such a fight.

US vessels might have to clear mines under fire and escort slow-moving cargo ships to and from Taiwan’s ports, he added. “They must do this not once but repeatedly, many times per week, for as long as the conflict continues.”

It’s a terrifying scenario, and one that Taiwan’s dependence on imported fossil fuels makes worse. Domestic stockpiles are critically inadequate, with LNG inventories only sufficient to cover 11 days of demand, coal running out after about 40 days, and oil buffers lasting 90 days. Once they are exhausted, capitulation would surely follow.

Politicians have failed to grasp the urgency of the situation. Nuclear plants provided more than half of Taiwan’s electricity in the mid-1980s, and only require refueling once every two years. But opposition to atomic power is deep in the DNA of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party, and the sole remaining reactor was shut down last May. Monopoly utility Taiwan Power Co. applied to restart the facility last month, but don’t expect a renaissance any time soon.

The opposition Kuomintang has similarly obstructed wind and solar energy, which don’t need imported fuel. Rural interests that form a key plank of the KMT’s power base have worked hard to block utility-scale renewables on farmland and at sea, stymieing cheap clean power.

It’s commonly argued that the densely populated island simply doesn’t have the space for such installations. That’s not right, though. The Netherlands, which is about the same size, generates twice as much power from wind and solar. Some 54,000 hectares, representing about 10% of Taiwan’s farmland, is given over to agritourism. About the same area is left permanently fallow because it can’t generate an economic return. Together, that’s more than 20 times the 4,684 hectares used by Taiwan’s solar farms.

A further 575,000 hectares consists of forest plantations, which fail in both economic and self-sufficiency terms: More than 99% of Taiwan’s timber is imported. Forests as a whole cover about 60% of the island, about 2.1 million hectares.

It’s unquestionably the case that building secure energy for Taiwan is politically difficult. But that’s an explanation of failure, not an excuse for it. If Taiwan had kept its four largely completed nuclear plants in operation and added four more , then atomic power could be generating a third of its electricity. If it hadn’t let politics and protectionism stymie its offshore wind sector for years, and covered 50,000 hectares of disused farmland and plantations with solar, renewables could be providing another half. With less than 20% of its electricity dependent on imports, it would be truly resilient in the event of attack. 

Since ancient times, small, rich polities holding out against aggressive rival powers have done everything they can to make themselves self-sufficient. Think the water tanks and granaries of Carthage and Constantinople, or the Chinese cities of Xiangyang and Fancheng, which held out for five years against Kublai Khan’s Mongol armies.

Taiwan’s failure to do the same has left it exposed. Let’s hope the current crisis provides the spur to fix this vulnerability, before it’s too late.

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This column reflects the personal views of the author and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

David Fickling is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering climate change and energy. Previously, he worked for Bloomberg News, the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times.

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