In many modern countries, the commander-in-chief is a civilian, rather than a soldier. Since they fall far behind a professional soldier when it comes to military knowledge and training, how should they lead the armed forces?
They do not direct military operations, of course, but set the country’s general direction, determine goals and lead the military and the general public in a cooperative effort toward national development. Looking at the issue from this perspective, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) is clearly unqualified to be commander-in-chief.
After Ma came to power, he started to reduce the size of the military. Not only did the number of soldiers drop drastically, but the army’s overall combat capability also took a sharp turn for the worse. There are a lot of redundant staff in the military, and streamlining — a process that was started by the administration of former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) — is a necessary reform.
However, by last year, the Ma administration had cut the number of soldiers to 210,000, from the 450,000 soldiers prior to the beginning of the streamlining in the late 1990s. In addition to the continued streamlining and reform during his terms in office, Ma has also initiated a volunteer military system and is planning to continue to push for a consolidation program to further cut the number of soldiers. This program is scheduled to be completed in 2019, by which time there is expected to be between 170,000 and 190,000 soldiers. These reductions also include high ranking officials at the Ministry of National Defense and the armed forces command.
The modern military focuses more on firepower than on manpower, and there is a trend toward replacing numbers with advanced weaponry. Reducing the number of soldiers and focusing on disarmament is the trend among countries at peace, but Ma’s reductions not only harm the army’s combat capabilities, but have resulted in the forced retirement of middle-aged officers, and made it more difficult for young officers to be hired.
Furthermore, the death of army corporal Hung Chung-chiu (洪仲丘) has damaged the volunteer system because no one is showing any interest in becoming a soldier. In particular, new training units are being reduced as training has been distorted as a result of Hung’s death. This has resulted in a shortage of new trainees and a discrepancy between combat capability and reorganization, which has had several negative consequences.
Worse still, Ma has been leaning heavily toward China since he came to power, and this has created confusion in the armed forces and a feeling that they do not know who and what they are fighting for. China still has thousands of missiles aimed at Taiwan, and in military training, it is still treated as an enemy that might launch an armed attack against Taiwan. However, officials in the Ma administration openly flirt with China and former officers that trained the army to fight the Chinese Communist Party are falling over each other to travel to China and participate in banquets and sing People’s Liberation Army songs. At the same time, Chinese tourists are swarming all over the place.
Who is our friend and who is our enemy?
The armed forces are deviating from the targets set by the commander-in-chief. No one should be surprised when preposterous events such as the one that is now being called “the Apache group tour” occur. If there is to be a thorough review of the turmoil in the armed forces, beginning from the bottom up is not going to do any good — the commander-in-chief himself is going to have to shoulder responsibility.
Taiwan stands at the epicenter of a seismic shift that will determine the Indo-Pacific’s future security architecture. Whether deterrence prevails or collapses will reverberate far beyond the Taiwan Strait, fundamentally reshaping global power dynamics. The stakes could not be higher. Today, Taipei confronts an unprecedented convergence of threats from an increasingly muscular China that has intensified its multidimensional pressure campaign. Beijing’s strategy is comprehensive: military intimidation, diplomatic isolation, economic coercion, and sophisticated influence operations designed to fracture Taiwan’s democratic society from within. This challenge is magnified by Taiwan’s internal political divisions, which extend to fundamental questions about the island’s identity and future
The narrative surrounding Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s attendance at last week’s Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit — where he held hands with Russian President Vladimir Putin and chatted amiably with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) — was widely framed as a signal of Modi distancing himself from the US and edging closer to regional autocrats. It was depicted as Modi reacting to the levying of high US tariffs, burying the hatchet over border disputes with China, and heralding less engagement with the Quadrilateral Security dialogue (Quad) composed of the US, India, Japan and Australia. With Modi in China for the
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) has postponed its chairperson candidate registration for two weeks, and so far, nine people have announced their intention to run for chairperson, the most on record, with more expected to announce their campaign in the final days. On the evening of Aug. 23, shortly after seven KMT lawmakers survived recall votes, KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) announced he would step down and urged Taichung Mayor Lu Shiow-yen (盧秀燕) to step in and lead the party back to power. Lu immediately ruled herself out the following day, leaving the subject in question. In the days that followed, several
The Jamestown Foundation last week published an article exposing Beijing’s oil rigs and other potential dual-use platforms in waters near Pratas Island (Dongsha Island, 東沙島). China’s activities there resembled what they did in the East China Sea, inside the exclusive economic zones of Japan and South Korea, as well as with other South China Sea claimants. However, the most surprising element of the report was that the authors’ government contacts and Jamestown’s own evinced little awareness of China’s activities. That Beijing’s testing of Taiwanese (and its allies) situational awareness seemingly went unnoticed strongly suggests the need for more intelligence. Taiwan’s naval
RSS