"Preparing for the Worst" by CWP alum Eyck Freymann

If Xi Jinping moves to take Taiwan by force, it will require logistical and political preparations that cannot be hidden from the rest of the world. In an essay adapted from his new book, Defending Taiwan, Eyck Freymann looks at how the U.S. and its allies can try to prevent Xi from pulling the trigger — and what they must do if he does.

In March and April 2021, up to 100,000 Russian military personnel and large quantities of military equipment began to mass along the Ukrainian border. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu claimed that Russia’s mobilization was a “response to threatening activities” by NATO, citing the Defender Europe 2021 exercise, which involved 28,000 troops. However, this excuse strained credibility. NATO’s exercise was long-planned, and the nature and timing of Russia’s response suggested that Moscow was not engaged in standard deterrence behavior. Satellite imagery showed movements of Russian armor, missiles, and heavy weaponry, including some transported all the way from Siberia. Russia took other unusual steps, too, including moving ships between the Caspian Sea and Black Sea and firing mortars at Ukrainian positions in the Donbas. On the night of April 14, a naval confrontation took place in the Sea of Azov between Ukrainian artillery boats and Russian coast guard vessels. Thereafter, Russia closed parts of the Black Sea to foreign vessels. Russia withdrew some of the troops in June, but left infrastructure for a potential invasion in place. 

By Eyck Freymann — April 12, 2026

Eyck Freymann is a Hoover Fellow at Stanford University, where he directs the Allied Coordination Working Group. He is also a Non-Resident Research Fellow at Columbia University's Center on Global Energy Policy, the Institute of Geoeconomics in Tokyo, and the China Maritime Studies Institute at the U.S. Naval War College.

Dr. Freymann works on strategies to preserve peace and protect U.S. interests and values in an era of systemic competition with China. He is the author of several books, including the forthcoming Defending Taiwan: A Strategy to Prevent War with China (Oxford, 2026), The Arsenal of Democracy: Technology, Industry, and Deterrence in an Age of Hard Choices (Hoover, 2025), and One Belt One Road: Chinese Power Meets the World (Harvard, 2021). His scholarly work has appeared in The China Quarterly and is forthcoming in International Security. 

Dr. Freymann comments on bipartisan national security issues in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Foreign Affairs, The Economist, War on the Rocks, The Wire China, and The Atlantic, among other venues. 

Before Hoover, Dr. Freymann held postdoctoral fellowships at Harvard and Columbia. He holds a doctorate from Oxford, masters degrees from Cambridge and Harvard, and a bachelors from Harvard, all in history and China studies.

Photo Credit: https://www.thewirechina.com/2026/04/12/preparing-for-the-worst/

Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=434061