US President Barack Obama’s pivot to Asia may bolster Taiwan’s security, but the nation must do more to defend itself, a Washington conference was told this week.
“Apathy kills,” US Naval War College strategy professor James Holmes said.
“The pivot’s capacity to dissuade or defeat China hinges on whether US Navy relief forces can reach the island’s [Taiwan’s] vicinity, do battle and prevail at a cost acceptable to the American state and society,” he said.
“This is an open question — but one that Taiwan’s armed forces can, and must, help answer in the affirmative,” Holmes told the conference on Taiwan and the US’ Pivot to Asia held at the Woodrow Wilson Center.
In the case of an attack by China, Taiwan must show a “vigorous hand” in its defense rather than passively awaiting rescue, he said.
“Otherwise, it may stand alone in its hour of need,” Holmes said.
He added that Taiwan must think of itself as a partner, as well as a beneficiary, of the US “strategic pirouette.”
Holmes said that Taipei’s performance is “suspect” in both military and diplomatic terms.
Defense budgets, he said, were a rough gauge of political resolve and they have dwindled from “already meager levels.”
Only by conspicuously upgrading its defenses, could Taiwan’s leadership help a US president justify the costs and hazards of ordering increasingly scarce forces into battle against “a peer competitor,” he said.
University of Miami professor June Teufel Dreyer said that although the overwhelming majority of Taiwanese had expressed a desire not to unify with China, the absorption of Taiwan into China “may be reaching a de facto if not a de jure tipping point, past which reversal is impossible.”
If this was the case, she said, it was difficult to see how the US could gain any advantage from incorporating Taiwan into a pivot that was aimed at constraining China.
At the same time, Taiwan’s military and intelligence bureaucracies had been infiltrated by Chinese operatives and it did not make sense to sell advanced weaponry “to a country that would transfer it to America’s most likely adversary,” she added.
Dreyer added that Taiwan’s current government seemed to favor gradual incorporation into China, whether formally or informally, and that would be disadvantageous to the US.
“Taiwan cannot count on the US to guarantee the security of a Taiwan whose administration seems to be encouraging its incorporation into China,” she said.
The military has spotted two Chinese warships operating in waters near Penghu County in the Taiwan Strait and sent its own naval and air forces to monitor the vessels, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. Beijing sends warships and warplanes into the waters and skies around Taiwan on an almost daily basis, drawing condemnation from Taipei. While the ministry offers daily updates on the locations of Chinese military aircraft, it only rarely gives details of where Chinese warships are operating, generally only when it detects aircraft carriers, as happened last week. A Chinese destroyer and a frigate entered waters to the southwest
The eastern extension of the Taipei MRT Red Line could begin operations as early as late June, the Taipei Department of Rapid Transit Systems said yesterday. Taipei Rapid Transit Corp said it is considering offering one month of free rides on the new section to mark its opening. Construction progress on the 1.4km extension, which is to run from the current terminal Xiangshan Station to a new eastern terminal, Guangci/Fengtian Temple Station, was 90.6 percent complete by the end of last month, the department said in a report to the Taipei City Council's Transportation Committee. While construction began in October 2016 with an
NON-RED SUPPLY: Boosting the nation’s drone industry is becoming increasingly urgent as China’s UAV dominance could become an issue in a crisis, an analyst said Taiwan’s drone exports to Europe grew 41.7-fold from 2024 to last year, with demand from Ukraine’s fight against Russian aggression the most likely driver of growth, a study showed. The Institute for Democracy, Society and Emerging Technology (DSET) in a statement on Wednesday said it found that many of Taiwan’s uncrewed aerial vehicle (UAV) sales were from Poland and the Czech Republic. These countries likely transferred the drones to Ukraine to aid it in its fight against the Russian invasion that started in 2022, it said. Despite the gains, Taiwan is not the dominant drone exporter to these markets, ranking second and fourth
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s comment last year on Tokyo’s potential reaction to a Taiwan-China conflict has forced Beijing to rewrite its invasion plans, a retired Japanese general said. Takaichi told the Diet on Nov. 7 last year that a Chinese naval blockade or military attack on Taiwan could constitute a “survival-threatening situation” for Japan, potentially allowing Tokyo to exercise its right to collective self-defense. Former Japan Ground Self-Defense Force general Kiyofumi Ogawa said in a recent speech that the remark has been interpreted as meaning Japan could intervene in the early stages of a Taiwan Strait conflict, undermining China’s previous assumptions
RSS