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Military reform not satisfactory, analysts claim

Over the past four years, the military has experienced a series of reforms made possible by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government, but the progress is still far from satisfactory, military analysts said yesterday.

The military has been most successful in eradicating the influence of political parties, which had been entrenched during the rule of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) over the past decades.

neutrality

Holmes Liao (廖宏祥), a researcher with the Taiwan Research Institute, said the military should be praised for its efforts toward achieving political neutrality.

"But except for this, the military has yet to make progress on the reforms pushed by the DPP after taking power [four years ago]," Liao said.

One of the main reforms that the DPP has sought from the military is to establish a civilian-led defense system.

The past four years saw a total of three defense ministers, including Tang Fei (唐飛), Wu Shih-wen (伍世文) and incumbent Tang Yao-ming (湯曜明), but none of them were civilians.

no connections

"The DPP was unable to make the military conform to its reform demands, mainly because it had no previous connections with the KMT-controlled military and could thus find no leverage to make the military follow its orders," Liao said.

"The condition also had a lot to do with the fact that the DPP did not have enough military experts on its side," he said.

"If President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) is able to win his second term, the priority of the DPP-led government would be to establish a reasonable and transparent environment for the discussion of military issues, which the military should not have the exclusive right to interpret," he said.

Liao said that he was disappointed at the military's exclusion of all outsiders from discussing or participating in military affairs, especially those related to policy-making or arms purchases.

doubts

He doubted whether the military has enough expertise to decide all the tough issues on its own and without getting advice.

Erich Shih (施孝瑋), a senior editor with the Defence International magazine, had the same doubts when asked to comment on the issue.

"Strictly speaking, I do not think that the military has made any reforms at all over the past four years. If there has been any reform at all, eradicating influences from political parties could be counted as one," Shih said.

greatest failure

"The military's greatest failure was in the enhancement of career officers' competence and knowledge levels. If it could not get its personnel to improve themselves, it should at least try not to make the situation worse," he said.

"The real problem was that the most talented military personnel chose to retire over the past few years because of certain factors, such as a sense of instability caused by poor leadership from the Ministry of National Defense," he said.

"The military might have introduced certain new systems from the US, but it did not know or refused to learn how to integrate these systems into the existing structure," he said.

The new systems that the military imported from the US include a net assessment system that could be used for the analysis of weaponry procurement.
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