Eurasian Pincer: The New Architecture of Total Blockade in the Taiwan Strait and North Pacific

The "Cold Start" and the Sino-Russian Steel Pact

The large-scale exercise "Justice Mission-2025", launched by the PLA Eastern Theater Command on December 29, 2025, is not a mere maneuver of deterrence. It represents the activation of a "worst-case scenario" plan: the acceleration of a total blockade campaign against Taiwan. The operation was executed as a "cold start"—an immediate action without prior warning that saw Chinese air and naval forces deploy simultaneously across five key areas surrounding the island within minutes.

A crucial element of this escalation is the Sino-Russian relationship, which has definitively consolidated following the joint incursion of December 9, 2025. Hours before the current maneuvers began, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov reaffirmed Moscow’s support for Beijing, confirming a now inseparable geopolitical axis. The advance notice provided by the Kremlin testifies to a compact Eurasian front: while China simulates the strangulation of Taiwan in response to the $11.1 billion US arms sale (including HIMARS and suicide drones), Russia activates pressure maneuvers to the North to paralyze the reaction capacity of regional allies.

I. The Culmination of the "Annihilation of Will" Strategy

The current scenario is the direct result of the Sino-Russian incursion of December 9, 2025, a watershed event that marked the transition from tactical deterrence to a strategy of "annihilation of the adversary's will."

• The End of Japanese Ambiguity: Over the last twelve months, Japan has abandoned decades of neutrality for explicit rearmament. Tokyo’s declarations regarding the active defense of Taiwan as a "matter of national survival" have removed the last diplomatic veil, transforming the North Pacific into a pre-war theater.

• The Pincer Maneuver: During the December 9 operation, mixed formations of Tu-95MS and H-6K bombers reached firing positions just 500 km from Osaka, demonstrating that hypersonic vectors can strike vital Japanese centers in less than 6 minutes, rendering conventional Aegis systems obsolete.

• Nuclear Blackmail in Tokyo Bay: The confirmed presence of attack submarines (Yasen-M and Type 094 classes) in key positions subjected the Japanese government to unprecedented underwater nuclear blackmail. This has redefined the parameters of national security, making nuclear integration with the United States an imperative necessity for survival.

  
  

II. The Northern Front: Moscow’s Pincer and the Neutralization of Japan

Russian live-fire exercises in the Northern Territories (Kurile Islands), scheduled through March 1, 2026, serve as the northern arm of the pincer. This pressure aims to neutralize Japan, forcing its Self-Defense Forces (JSDF) to defend their northern borders precisely while Taiwan is being isolated to the South.

III. Encirclement and Blockade: The End of Territorial Sovereignty

The exercise zones form a "three-sided encirclement," with Chinese assets reaching as close as 9 kilometers from the Taiwanese coast. Beijing has demonstrated that the 12 and 24-nautical-mile lines no longer hold legal meaning for the mainland: the entire Strait is now treated as internal Chinese jurisdiction.

IV. Wing Loong II: The "Eyes" of the Naval Blockade

The technological pillar of the quarantine is the Wing Loong II (GJ-2) drone, deployed by the China Coast Guard (CCG):

• SAR Identification: Utilizing Synthetic Aperture Radar, it identifies military payloads (such as HIMARS) on civilian merchant ships even in prohibitive weather conditions.

• Law Enforcement 2.0: It coordinates the forced inspections mandated by the "Strangulation" manifesto against commercial shipping, including the large container ships of Evergreen Marine.

  
  

V. The "Anaconda" Doctrine and Civil-Military Fusion

We are witnessing an architecture of Liminal Warfare (sub-threshold warfare) that exploits civil-military fusion—such as mobile electromagnetic catapults on cargo ships—to impose a "de facto quarantine." Beijing is isolating Taiwan within a jurisdictional bubble, mirroring the logic of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis but replacing the nuclear embargo with a coordinated Eurasian technological and logistical strangulation.