TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Analysts have proposed the EU carry out airlifts to aid Taiwan if the country is besieged by a Chinese aerial blockade in the future.

In an in-depth piece on the topic published in The Diplomat, Franz-Stefan Gady and Oskar Glaese, two researchers at the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, discuss four different scenarios for Chinese action against Taiwan and offer possible strategies the EU could pursue to assist Taiwan.

These four scenarios were first proposed by the U.S. Department of Defense in a 2021 report and include a coercive cyber and information operations campaign, a dedicated air and maritime blockade, a stand-off campaign of air and missile strikes, and an invasion of Taiwan’s outlying islands and/or the main island itself.

In their discussion on “Scenario 2: Air and Maritime Blockade,” Gady and Glaese outline how the EU could send civilian cargo planes to stage airlifts and break through the blockade. This, they argue, would both help Taiwan and avoid escalation into a kinetic conflict since it would be a non-military operation.

To emphasize this to Beijing, the airlift could be run by the EU’s Emergency Response Coordination Centre. Agreements could be made in advance between Europe’s commercial airline operators and its governments to facilitate this.

The analysts posit that, if China were to pursue scenario 2, it would be hoping to avoid all-out war and may therefore be less likely to shoot down Europe’s civilian cargo planes. Europe could combine the airlift with the threat of economic sanctions to put pressure on Chinese leaders and deescalate the situation.