Taiwan Fires HIMARS as China Launches New Coast-Guard Patrols East of Island

The choreography recalls the 1995-96 Taiwan Strait Crisis—when PLA missile tests book-ended Taiwan’s first direct presidential election—and the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis naval standoff: small steps meant to signal resolve without crossing the line into full war. What is new is the constellation of asymmetric weapons (HIMARS, Harpoons, drones) and coast-guard “gray-zone” tactics that blur peace-war boundaries. The episode fits a two-decade trend: China uses law-enforcement hulls to normalise claims (as in the 2012 Scarborough Shoal seizure), while the U.S. and partners arm Taiwan to raise the cost of forceful annexation. Over a 100-year lens, semiconductors and rare-earths make this more than a local quarrel; whoever controls Taiwan’s advanced fabs and the sea lanes around them shapes the future industrial order. Yet history also warns that repeated militarised signalling can calcify into inevitability—Imperial Japan’s incremental moves in the 1930s show how salami-slicing can eventually trigger wider conflict when economic interdependence no longer restrains power politics.