If the United States and China want a glimpse of what war over Taiwan might look like, they need look no further than Ukraine, where Russia’s conscripted army more than met its match in Ukraine’s scrappy, Western-armed freedom fighters.

There are significant differences between Europe’s second-largest country — Ukraine, a recognized sovereign nation with friendly nations on its western border — and Taiwan, which has about half as many people packed on an island one-sixteenth the size while democratically self-ruled and lacking full international recognition.