Washington’s need to defend Taiwan from a Chinese attack is greater today than it was 30 years ago, a leading US military strategist said on Tuesday.
“Taiwan is everything we preach about — it is what we want other countries to be,” said Thomas McNaugher, director of studies at Georgetown University’s Center for Security Studies.
Invading Taiwan would be an “extremely dicey” operation, McNaugher told an Atlantic Council discussion titled “Conflict in the Taiwan Strait?”
Amphibious assaults are very tough and China does not have any particular experience in that area, he said.
Rather than a direct attack, Beijing might try a blockade if it decided to force unification, he said.
However, a blockade would take a lot of time to enforce and that would allow US power to build up “pretty effectively,” he said.
McNaugher said that China’s military buildup has been very effective and comprehensive, and Beijing was continuing to make “steady, relentless progress.”
He said the US still had an edge in the conventional balance of power, but that “we have entered that fuzzy area where there is a lot of uncertainty about how this would go.”
In case of an attack, US intervention would depend on how the hostilities started, McNaugher said.
“Taiwan is a raucous democracy; they even have fist fights in the legislature. It has a great economy with great human rights,” he said. “If we were to let Taiwan go to a rapacious and naked Chinese attack, not only would it destroy the global economy, it would undermine our credibility.”
On the other hand, if a war started because Taiwan “promotes it,” there would be a real question about US support, he said.
The message to the Taiwanese was that in case of a conflict with China they had to be the victims and not the promoters, he said.
One way for Taiwan to avoid an attack would be for it to “very visibly” build up its ability to defend itself and increase the level of deterrence, he said.
In related news, Walter Lohman, director of the Asian Studies Center at the Washington-based Heritage Foundation, said in a new paper that the US should clarify its support for Taiwan.
As “carefully and responsibly” as president-elect Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) might approach relations with China, they nevertheless fundamentally rejected Beijing’s dream of ultimate unification, and this would remain an underlying source of tension as long as the DPP remains in power, he wrote.
US President Barack Obama’s administration should establish “unwavering support” for Taiwan’s security and prerogative in determining its own future, Lohman said.
“To this end, the administration should facilitate new arms sales, or, failing this, at least begin building interagency consensus and support on Capitol Hill and Taipei to facilitate approval early in 2017,” he wrote.
“New fighter jets and diesel-electric submarines should be at the top of the list,” he added.
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