Talk about anticlimactic.
In the run-up to the Double Ten National Day, the press was bursting with speculation about the big guns that Taiwan was going to bring out for the first large-scale military parade in 16 years. Most of the chatter concerned the dreaded Hsiung Feng (Brave Wind) II-E land attack cruise missile.
Never mind that it sounds like a high-tech flatulence bomb. This piece of equipment, now in development, reportedly will have a range of more than 600km. That's enough to hit China's new consumer masses where it really hurts: the Louis Vuitton store in Shanghai. (You can already hear thousands of chic Shanghainese dames shrieking in unison: "Not the handbags -- anything but the handbags!")
In the end, the Break Wind II-E was a no-show. In its place came the not-as-intimidating Hsiung Feng III ship-to-ship missile. Rolling it down Ketagalan Boulevard was supposed to be a big morale booster.
But did you see the size of the thing? Granted, I wouldn't want to be caught snoozing anywhere near the target area of one of these nasty projectiles. But you could slip an extra-large Kimono condom over the thing and still have room to spare. Why not just call it the HK-III (Hen Ke'ai III) missile, slap a Hello Kitty sticker on the side and be done with it?
The rest of the parade was also short on the Fear Factor. Sure, the black-clad frogmen looked, like, totally awesome, as the Americans would say. And I wouldn't want to play chicken with a CM-32 Clouded Leopard armored personnel carrier.
But the snipers? They looked like a bunch of Wookie extras that had wandered off the set of the last Star Wars movie -- the only thing missing was a truck full of pebble-chucking Ewoks behind them. And what's with all the beplumed marching bands? When trying to intimidate the Chicoms, we need to be thinking Ridley Scott, not Liberace.
Finally, I don't think the newly unveiled TX-9 class stealth tuba is really a good use of taxpayer money.
All of which points to a larger problem. When it comes to psychological warfare, Taiwan is falling behind woefully. The Chicoms have cool-sounding "Sunburn" missiles and lots of other Russian equipment that can only be pronounced correctly after gargling a liter of vodka -- like the "Sovremenny-class" destroyer. What do we have? The "Guppy-class" submarine. Not exactly guaranteed to make Chicom grunts poop their pants with terror. What's next -- the Sea Monkey VI attack dinghy? The SW-B (Sick Whaleshark, B series) armored banana boat?
It's in this department that Taiwan could take a page from African autocrats, who knew a thing or two about fear-inspiring names. Take the former Zaire's Mobutu Sese Seko (now passed on to that cologne-filled bathtub in the sky). His full formal name meant: "The all-powerful warrior who, because of his endurance and inflexible will to win, goes from conquest to conquest, leaving fire in his wake."
Now that's the kind of razzamatazz we need. Like the ad men say, it's not the steak, it's the sizzle -- and that goes double for stinky tofu.
And, much as I'm loath to deploy a cliched innuendo like "size matters," in this case it's apt. If we're going to make a big deal out of unveiling military hardware, let's make sure we don't end up looking like a poorly endowed Japanese salaryman in a Harlem Globetrotters locker room.
Here's suggesting we develop the massive Hsiung Feng IV-BD (Big Daddy), whose chief purpose will be to completely fill Chongqing S Road during military parades and so restore our national sense of adequacy.
If it also has some military use, so much the better.
Intimidating equipment is all the more important since our allies aren't exactly the fiercest posse around. Just take a close look at our 24-nation-strong Coalition of the Willing-to-be-Bought.
Reuters recently ran a story entitled "Taiwan and South Pacific Allies Agree to Resist China." Sounds great. But when's the last time Kiribati scored a resounding military victory? Tuvalu is too busy sinking into oblivion to bother with a military. And the Vatican? There's only so much damage you can inflict when you're constantly trying to keep your mitre from falling off.
And so, if push comes to shove, we'll be facing down 3 million members of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) who are armed with some of the highest-tech military equipment now on sale in Russia. In our corner? The military equivalent of the Fat Albert gang.
Sure, the US supposedly has our back -- but its feet are looking colder by the day. As Defense News put it recently: "Many in Taiwan's military have expressed feelings of abandonment by the United States."
Great, on top of everything else, we've now got abandonment issues.
All the more reason for the Taiwanese military to stop sandbagging us. I now have confirmation -- from the highest levels of the Defense Ministry's trashbags -- of possibly the nation's most jealously guarded military secret.
Somewhere in the greater Taichung area, an elite female fighting force is about to complete its training: the long-range Psycho Xiaojie brigade.
They take their name from the admittedly sexist stereotype -- popular among a certain class of louche expat -- of the scorned, vengeful and unhinged Taiwanese lassie.
But don't underestimate this brigade's potency. Kept in a perpetual state of rage against their ex-boyfriends through an intensive psychological regimen, these ladies are ready to bring the Red Menace to its knees on a half-hour's notice.
Before, they could only be deployed as far as Penghu. Now, thanks to technological advances, they are capable of striking deep inside China, creating intensely embarrassing public scenes and laying down a withering barrage of incriminating photographs and inappropriate text message transcripts at the offices of the highest-ranking PLA bigwigs.
See if the PLA can develop a missile to stop that. They think they can waltz in and take Taiwan? They don't know the meaning of fear.
Heard or read something particularly objectionable about Taiwan? Johnny wants to know: dearjohnny@taipeitimes.com is the place to reach me, with "Dear Johnny" in the subject line.
Because much of what former US president Donald Trump says is unhinged and histrionic, it is tempting to dismiss all of it as bunk. Yet the potential future president has a populist knack for sounding alarums that resonate with the zeitgeist — for example, with growing anxiety about World War III and nuclear Armageddon. “We’re a failing nation,” Trump ranted during his US presidential debate against US Vice President Kamala Harris in one particularly meandering answer (the one that also recycled urban myths about immigrants eating cats). “And what, what’s going on here, you’re going to end up in World War
Earlier this month in Newsweek, President William Lai (賴清德) challenged the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to retake the territories lost to Russia in the 19th century rather than invade Taiwan. He stated: “If it is for the sake of territorial integrity, why doesn’t [the PRC] take back the lands occupied by Russia that were signed over in the treaty of Aigun?” This was a brilliant political move to finally state openly what many Chinese in both China and Taiwan have long been thinking about the lost territories in the Russian far east: The Russian far east should be “theirs.” Granted, Lai issued
On Tuesday, President William Lai (賴清德) met with a delegation from the Hoover Institution, a think tank based at Stanford University in California, to discuss strengthening US-Taiwan relations and enhancing peace and stability in the region. The delegation was led by James Ellis Jr, co-chair of the institution’s Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region project and former commander of the US Strategic Command. It also included former Australian minister for foreign affairs Marise Payne, influential US academics and other former policymakers. Think tank diplomacy is an important component of Taiwan’s efforts to maintain high-level dialogue with other nations with which it does
On Sept. 2, Elbridge Colby, former deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy and force development, wrote an article for the Wall Street Journal called “The US and Taiwan Must Change Course” that defends his position that the US and Taiwan are not doing enough to deter the People’s Republic of China (PRC) from taking Taiwan. Colby is correct, of course: the US and Taiwan need to do a lot more or the PRC will invade Taiwan like Russia did against Ukraine. The US and Taiwan have failed to prepare properly to deter war. The blame must fall on politicians and policymakers