The US Secretary of Defense recently released a report suggesting that Taiwan's defense policy and procurement decision-making processes are poorly coordinated.
The report, titled "Taiwan's National Security, Defense Policy and Weapons Procurement Processes," was written by Michael Swaine, a China expert at the Rand Corporation's National Defense Research Institute in the US.
In the report, Swaine suggests that Taiwan's national security is poorly coordinated, both within the top levels of the senior leadership and between the civilian and military elite. As a result, he wrote, Taiwan lacks a strategy that can integrate and guide its foreign and defense policies.
The report also claims that the motivation for President Lee Teng-hui (
In his report, Swaine said Lee ignored the costs of the TMD and the possibility that it could provoke China.
He also criticized the fact that Taiwan's military buys advanced armaments without considering the insufficient training of its military personnel and its poor maintenance of high-tech arms.
Swaine concluded in his report that Taiwan's defense policy and procurement decision-making processes are significantly influenced by a variety of non-military criteria that complicate Taiwan's motives and objectives in requesting arms from the US and calls into question Taiwan's ability to effectively absorb such arms.
Swaine recommends that the US government should develop and maintain close contacts with Taiwan's key decision-makers but avoid providing arms and assistance to Taiwan in ways that might provoke greater tension with China without appreciably improving Taiwan's defense capabilities, according to sources.
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