What happens if China attacks Taiwan and Russia attacks an eastern NATO country: The West has no plan

Western military planners seem reluctant to discuss the nightmare scenario of China and Russia simultaneously launching a war. But they agree on how it might begin: a coordinated, nearly simultaneous attack on opposite sides of the planet, writes renowned columnist Simon Schuster in the magazine. The Atlantic.

Russia strikes a NATO member in Eastern Europe, while China simultaneously takes action against Taiwan. The US military would then have to respond on two fronts, and if the war in the Middle East continues, on three.

Until recently, such a possibility was considered one of the most unlikely threats—somewhere between a stolen nuclear bomb and an alien invasion. Synchronized attacks would require a massive conspiracy, difficult for Beijing and Moscow to conceal. Satellites would detect troop preparations, giving the US and its allies time to bolster their defenses.

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Currently, such an attack scenario is still considered hypothetical—even if China and Russia decide to act together, the scale of this coordination would be so great that it would be impossible to conceal, giving the US and its allies time to prepare for defense. However, Shuster notes that the experts and strategists he interviewed were unable to clearly answer the question of what the West would do in such a situation.

Florence Gaub, Director of Research at the NATO Defense College in Rome, said that Alliance planners understand this planning gap, but are not taking any steps to address it.

Former US Navy Rear Admiral Mark Montgomery, who specializes in conducting large-scale war games, said he and his colleagues last explored the possibility of a two-front war against Russia and China 15 years ago, and, according to him, nothing good came of it. It turned out that the US lacked either sufficient weapons stockpiles or the industrial capacity to sustain combat operations on multiple fronts for long.

From Moscow and Beijing's perspective, the window of opportunity to strike the West has likely never looked so wide. The US is bogged down in a war with Iran, forced to redeploy a significant portion of its ships and aircraft to the Middle East, and its air defense missile stockpiles have been reduced by two-thirds. Due to Donald Trump's hardline policies toward his own allies, differences between the US and European NATO members have reached their highest level in decades.

Many military threats of the past seemed unbelievable until they became reality. Prime examples include Germany's attack on the USSR, when Stalin refused to believe intelligence and military reports of the impending invasion until the very end, as well as Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, which the United States unexpectedly and therefore found itself completely unprepared for.

Eric Heginbotham, a wargaming expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Program on Security Studies, says the general theme of a two-front war for the United States is being discussed more frequently now than before. However, no reputable research institute in the US or Europe has yet conducted wargaming on this topic. This, however, does not rule out the possibility that such topics could have been analyzed within classified Pentagon structures.

Although not very frequently, the risk of a multi-front war for NATO has indeed been mentioned in public statements by high-ranking officials in recent months. For example, in December 2025, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte stated: "China is looking at Taiwan, and I am absolutely convinced that if China takes military action against Taiwan, it will push its junior partner—Russia under Putin—to take over our position here in Europe."

In 2023, the Pacific Forum research institute organized a series of theoretical command-post exercises in which China attacked Taiwan and North Korea seized the opportunity to invade South Korea—and both allies requested assistance from the United States.

"We were struggling to react and delegate tasks. And we weren't even talking about Europe. I can only imagine what would have happened if Russia had been added," said Pacific Forum President David Santoro.

One of the most detailed public analyses of a possible Western response to a Russian and Chinese attack was presented by the Czech research institute Values ​​Center for Security Policy. They simulated the first war game on this topic back in the spring of 2024, and the institute has since organized approximately 20 rounds of war games with experts from various countries, including Japan and South Korea.

One such scenario goes like this: China bans the export of raw materials needed for Europe's defense industry. Five months later, European companies run out of supplies and cease arms production. Russia, in turn, having gained full access to Chinese resources, invades a NATO country in Eastern Europe.

The results were alarming for Europe: in virtually every scenario, the US prioritized the Chinese threat and transferred significant forces from Europe to Asia, leaving European allies to face Russia alone. Jakub Janda, director of the Values ​​Center for Security Policy, notes that all these scenarios clearly demonstrate the need for Western unity, because if Russia and China act in concert and the US begins to conflict with Europe, the West's prospects will be bleak.

About a year ago, NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Europe, General Alexus Grinkevich, publicly warned of the risk of a two-front war against Russia and China, calling on European allies to help the United States prepare. However, when the author of this article asked military experts and strategists what the West would do in such a situation, most expressed confusion and even shame at how little had been done in recent years to thoroughly examine this risk.

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As Russia and China grow closer, the US struggles to end the war in the Middle East, and tensions with NATO allies persist, this nightmare scenario becomes increasingly realistic. If Russia and China act in concert while the US begins to quarrel with its allies, the West's chances of winning a war on two fronts become quite bleak.

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