Commentary Concern over a surprise attack by China against Taiwan is a major concern. But the world should be aware that the Chinese regime may launch attacks against India, Japan, or the United States because a clear and intuitive lesson of history is that strategic surprise succeeds, and a review of the evidence demonstrates that it often does in international politics. The German invasion of the Soviet Union, Operation Barbarossa, the October 1973 War, and Pearl Harbor are successful cases of surprise attacks. In the case of Barbarossa, the Soviet Union was surprised because Joseph Stalin—fully cognizant of Adolf Hitler’s hatred of the Soviet Union—was never fully convinced that Germany would not attack because it lacked the power to fight the Soviets while still fighting Britain. Stalin’s mistake was to project the costs and benefits Germany would incur by attacking the Soviet Union, without ever considering how these values could …