The Hsiung FENG III missile, one of which was accidentally fired by a Republic of China Navy vessel on Friday last week, was designed to target ocean-bound enemy vessels. Its maximum range means it can reach as far as the coast of China’s Fujian Province. It does not pose a threat to China’s inland areas. However, in terms of international relations, the missile blunder does pose a grave challenge to regional safety. To ignore that is dangerous.
There have long been tensions between neighboring countries in the Asia-Pacific region, especially in East Asia, where any two nations have spent more time with hackles raised than enjoying peaceful relations. Jingoism only compounds the situation — it leaves very little space for rational negotiations.
In the West, potential tensions are mitigated with political alliances such as the EU and military alliances such as NATO. These are lacking in the Asia-Pacific region.
Precisely because there is long-standing antagonism in the region and Taiwan happens to occupy the central position in the first island chain, Taipei must be extra prudent and handle foreign relations with pragmatism and flexibility.
Taiwan’s primary hypothetical threat from the north and south comes from China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Taiwan has shown no ambition to expand its territory. However, a missile accidentally discharged by Taiwan, although not landing beyond the Taiwan Strait’s median line, could disrupt freedom of navigation in the Strait. As the missile was fired without warning, the cross-strait situation might have been severely aggravated.
Taiwan’s ability to impose the required level of military discipline might be questioned, and this could affect its participation in regional military cooperation and even its attempt to secure arms sales. The incident reveals the insufficiency of a hierarchy of control and safety measures in the military, which for a long time has only undergone training and not fought a campaign. It is evident that the military’s command and control system is seriously flawed.
The new government should fight to establish total command of the military and let military bureaucrats run it, while reaching out to other nations by taking part in regional military cooperation and exchanges.
President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) should exercise her role as commander-in-chief with more delicacy and depth. The training of a low-ranking military officer is already cumbersome enough, so frequent inspections are inappropriate.
However, what she can do is visit veterans on important holidays and listen to their advice — thus showing them the proper respect. She could also implement fair promotions for officers, take part in strategic deployments and systematically promote military bureaucrats. So far, most high-ranking military bureaucrats have been transferred from military offices, even though the National Defense Act (國防法) and the Organization Act of the Ministry of National Defense (國防部組織法) were implemented more than 10 years ago.
It is urgent that mutual trust and interactions between Taiwan and other nations in the region are enhanced. In the Asia-Pacific region, Taiwan is one of the very few nations that do not observe PLA operations by engaging in military exercises with other nations in the region, so if anything goes wrong, misjudgements could lead to devastating consequences.
Taiwan’s military must be responsible and maintain strict discipline. Incidents such as this must not occur again. It is Taiwan’s duty to safeguard regional safety in the Asia-Pacific region.
Ernie Ko is vice executive director of Transparency International-Taiwan.
Translated by Ethan Zhan
Could Asia be on the verge of a new wave of nuclear proliferation? A look back at the early history of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which recently celebrated its 75th anniversary, illuminates some reasons for concern in the Indo-Pacific today. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin recently described NATO as “the most powerful and successful alliance in history,” but the organization’s early years were not without challenges. At its inception, the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty marked a sea change in American strategic thinking. The United States had been intent on withdrawing from Europe in the years following
My wife and I spent the week in the interior of Taiwan where Shuyuan spent her childhood. In that town there is a street that functions as an open farmer’s market. Walk along that street, as Shuyuan did yesterday, and it is next to impossible to come home empty-handed. Some mangoes that looked vaguely like others we had seen around here ended up on our table. Shuyuan told how she had bought them from a little old farmer woman from the countryside who said the mangoes were from a very old tree she had on her property. The big surprise
The issue of China’s overcapacity has drawn greater global attention recently, with US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen urging Beijing to address its excess production in key industries during her visit to China last week. Meanwhile in Brussels, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen last week said that Europe must have a tough talk with China on its perceived overcapacity and unfair trade practices. The remarks by Yellen and Von der Leyen come as China’s economy is undergoing a painful transition. Beijing is trying to steer the world’s second-largest economy out of a COVID-19 slump, the property crisis and
Ursula K. le Guin in The Ones Who Walked Away from Omelas proposed a thought experiment of a utopian city whose existence depended on one child held captive in a dungeon. When taken to extremes, Le Guin suggests, utilitarian logic violates some of our deepest moral intuitions. Even the greatest social goods — peace, harmony and prosperity — are not worth the sacrifice of an innocent person. Former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), since leaving office, has lived an odyssey that has brought him to lows like Le Guin’s dungeon. From late 2008 to 2015 he was imprisoned, much of this