One Year On: National Security - Military quietly putting offshore engagement policy into practice

Considering that the idea of "offshore engagement" has now been thoroughly adopted by Taiwan's armed forces, it is hard to imagine that only a year ago it was so contentious an issue.

The policy, first spelled out by President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) during the presidential election campaign, centers around the idea of "engaging the enemy in areas outside the island of Taiwan." In short the idea is not to fight the enemy "on the beaches" but to make sure they never get to the beaches in the first place.

Given that an invasion force is at its maximum vulnerability when at sea, Chen's initiative might have seemed like common sense. But from the very beginning, the offshore engagement policy met strong opposition from conservatives both inside and outside the military because they, perhaps deliberately, misconstrued the term as indicating provocative, perhaps preemptive action.

A hot debate on the topic arose after Chen elucidated the policy during a speech he made at the 76th anniversary of the army academy last June.

Opposition from conservatives subsequently prompted Chen to keep quiet about the policy and for a while it appeared as if the conservatives had won the debate and forced the president to abandon the idea.

This in turn led the military itself to take the initiative to defend Chen by pointing out that his offshore engagement policy did not conflict with what was already the military's long-term defense strategy. In July, General Tang Yao-ming (湯曜明), chief of the general staff, even called an unprecedented press conference to promote the offshore engagement policy.

"Taiwan's military does not have the capability to project forces into China. Nor do we plan to do that," Tang said at the press conference. "But our air force and navy do have the capability to carry out missions in the category of offshore engagement," he said.

Tang denied that the offshore engagement strategy was a new concept for the armed forces since it fell into the traditional thinking of the military in respect to how to defend the country.

"Our defense strategy has always been not to let any fighting happen on Taiwan proper. The concept of offshore engagement is consistent with our defense thinking over the past few decades," Tang said.

Tang's defense of Chen gave the president a powerful boost by showing that the military fully supported him on the issue.

But such support was not forthcoming from Tang Fei (唐飛), who was Tang Yao-ming's predecessor as the chief of the general staff and Chen's first premier. Tang Fei openly cast doubt on the offshore engagement policy, saying he did not understand what the term meant.

In the face of opposition to the term "offshore engagement," the military chose not to openly announce its adoption as a policy but nevertheless put the concept into practice.

Andrew Yang (楊念祖), secretary-general of the Chinese Council of Advanced Policy Studies, said the military prefers to use the term "offensive capability," the substance of which is quite close to Chen's idea of offshore engagement.

"Another defense strategy idea of Chen's, developing `mobile strike' capability, is also taking shape in the military. It seems that the military is getting closer in thought to Chen," Yang said.

The navy's recently developed defense strategy, which will use Kidd-class destroyers to be bought from the US, is a demonstration of how the military has quietly put the offshore engagement policy into practice without saying so out loud.