When Crises No Longer Stand Alone
The rapid escalation around the Taiwan Strait in late December 2025 has triggered a broader strategic question: are today’s global flashpoints increasingly connected rather than isolated? As China conducts its largest-ever military exercises around Taiwan under Justice Mission 2025, Russia is preparing live-fire drills in the Northern Territories beginning January 1, 2026. At the same time, peace talks between Ukraine and Russia remain unresolved, leaving Europe’s security architecture in a state of suspension.
This convergence has prompted analysts and NATO leadership to openly question whether pressure in one theater is being designed to absorb attention and resources elsewhere. The issue is not whether Moscow and Beijing are formal military allies, but whether their actions are strategically complementary in ways that reshape the global balance.
From Posturing to Rehearsal: A New Military Baseline Around Taiwan
What distinguishes Justice Mission 2025 from previous PLA exercises is not rhetoric, but scale and behavior. On a single day, Taiwan detected 89 Chinese military aircraft and 28 vessels, a significant increase from the 60–70 aircraft peaks seen during high-tension periods in 2024. This operational density suggests more than signaling, it reflects rehearsal under near-real conditions.
Equally notable was China’s decision to send vessels into Taiwan’s 24-nautical-mile contiguous zone, deliberately stopping short of the 12-mile territorial boundary. This tactic compresses Taiwan’s defensive buffer while avoiding a clear legal threshold for escalation. It is a textbook example of “salami slicing,” incrementally redefining norms until resistance becomes costly and routine.
The civilian impact has been immediate. Live-fire danger zones forced the rerouting of over 850 flights, affecting nearly 100,000 passengers in a single day. Even absent a formal blockade, the disruption demonstrates how military exercises alone can impose economic and logistical costs.
Psychological Warfare and Narrative Framing
Military activity has been accompanied by an intensified psychological and information campaign. A Global Times poster depicting “flaming arrows” raining down on Taiwan widely interpreted as a reference to the PLA Rocket Force signals the integration of missile forces into blockade and coercion scenarios.
Equally significant is the language used. Referring to Taiwan’s governing Democratic Progressive Party as “green bugs” is a dehumanizing rhetorical device, reframing potential military action as pest control rather than conflict. Such framing is designed to normalize coercion domestically while intimidating audiences across the strait.
This narrative strategy reinforces the sense that Beijing is not merely demonstrating power, but actively conditioning perceptions of legitimacy and inevitability.
Diplomatic Brinkmanship and the Japan Factor
China’s diplomatic posture during this escalation has been unusually blunt. Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian warned that the situation was approaching the “brink of war,” language widely interpreted as a response to the $11.1 billion U.S. arms deal approved earlier this month. Beijing argues that the inclusion of long-range drones and precision strike systems transforms Taiwan into an offensive outpost, forcing China to respond.
Japan has emerged as a central target of Chinese frustration. Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s refusal to retract comments suggesting Japan could defend Taiwan has led Beijing to treat Tokyo as a de facto co-belligerent. In response, Japan has accelerated deployments of radar systems and missiles to its southwestern islands, while simultaneously facing renewed pressure in the north.
This dual-front anxiety places Japan at the center of the current crisis geometry.
Russia’s Northern Drills: Coincidence or Convergence?
Against this backdrop, Russia’s announcement of live-fire exercises in the Northern Territories starting January 1, 2026 takes on added significance. Diplomats in Washington and Tokyo view the timing as strategically inconvenient at best and deliberately distracting at worst.
If Japan is forced to monitor and prepare for contingencies both north and south, its ability to support Taiwan, either directly or logistically, becomes constrained. Even without formal coordination, Russia’s actions objectively benefit Beijing by complicating Japan’s defense calculus.
This is where the Ukraine war enters the equation. With peace talks ongoing but unresolved, NATO resources remain committed, attention divided, and strategic bandwidth limited.
NATO’s View: One Strategic System, Multiple Theaters
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte articulated this interconnected view explicitly on December 23, 2025. He warned that global theaters cannot be treated independently, arguing that a Chinese move on Taiwan would almost certainly involve Russia keeping NATO “busy” elsewhere.
Rutte’s remarks reflect a broader strategic recalibration within NATO: European security is no longer separable from Indo-Pacific stability. A Russian success in Ukraine, he argued, would embolden authoritarian coordination globally, not necessarily through formal alliances, but through synchronized pressure.
This framing does not accuse Moscow and Beijing of joint war planning. Rather, it highlights how parallel actions can produce cumulative effects that overwhelm democratic response mechanisms.
Economic Signals: The Quiet Pressure Point
Markets in Taipei and Shanghai have remained relatively stable, but underlying risks are mounting. The five PLA-designated zones effectively choke access to Taiwan’s major ports at Keelung and Kaohsiung. Even simulated danger zones can trigger higher insurance premiums, rerouting, and shipping delays amounting to a soft blockade without a declaration.
The implications extend well beyond Taiwan. Any disruption to port access affects the global semiconductor supply chain, prompting “just-in-case” inventory stockpiling that can drive price volatility in technology sectors worldwide.
Economic pressure, in this sense, becomes another instrument of strategic influence.
So Is Russia Helping China?
There is no sign that Russia and China are running joint military operations or formally coordinating a reunification plan, even though the two countries have grown much closer over the past decade. What is becoming clearer, however, is that their actions are unfolding in ways that reinforce each other. By applying pressure in different regions at the same time, each side benefits from the other’s moves without needing an official agreement or shared command.
For China, Russia’s northern pressure on Japan and continued engagement in Ukraine reduce the likelihood of unified, rapid countermeasures. For Russia, a distracted NATO and Indo-Pacific crisis dilute Western focus on Eastern Europe. Each benefits from the other’s actions without explicit coordination.
This convergence does not require secret agreements to be effective. It relies instead on timing, shared incentives, and a mutual understanding of how global attention is allocated.
What to Watch Next
The most critical near-term indicator is whether PLA vessels remain in Taiwan’s contiguous zone after the current live-fire windows close on December 30. If they do, what began as an exercise may quietly redefine the operational baseline.
Equally important will be Russia’s execution of its January drills and whether they expand beyond symbolic signaling. Together, these developments will clarify whether today’s escalation is episodic or the early stage of a sustained, multi-theater pressure strategy.
Conclusion: A World of Linked Pressures
Justice Mission 2025 is not simply about Taiwan. Nor are Russia’s northern drills only about territorial disputes. In an era of global power competition, actions in one region increasingly shape outcomes in another.
The emerging reality is a strategic environment where crises are no longer sequential, but simultaneous and where advantage lies not in direct confrontation, but in forcing others to respond everywhere at once.
0 Comments