The US Department of State last month approved the sale of the M136 Volcano Vehicle-Launched Scatterable Mine System to Taiwan. The proposed sale should significantly boost Taiwan’s asymmetrical warfare capabilities and help undermine a possible landing by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA).
The Volcano dispenser contains 960 anti-tank mines and is capable of laying a minefield 1,100m long by 120m wide in four to 12 minutes.
However, the proposed sale has sparked concern from the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and academics that it would turn Taiwan into “an island of mines.”
Academia Sinica’s Chu Yun-han (朱雲漢) said that “the US intended to Ukraine-ize Taiwan.” KMT Legislator Jessica Chen (陳玉珍) said that residents of Kinmen County have traumatic memories of landmines, as people have lost limbs after stepping on them. KMT Legislator-at-large Wu Sz-huai (吳斯懷) accused the US of planting landmines everywhere except its own soil.
Other questions were raised about whether the landmines contravene the Ottawa Treaty aimed at eliminating anti-personnel mines around the world.
Army Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Chang Yuan-hsun (章元勳) said that mines placed by the Volcano system do not target personnel, but vehicles such as tanks and trucks, so its use would not contravene the Ottawa Treaty.
As the landmines would be placed on the ground’s surface, rather than underground as with traditional mines, they would be easy for people to identify. The mines’ timed self-destruct capability also helps to minimize accidental triggers and casualties.
That the KMT has the habit of opposing every arms deal with the US is nothing new, but this latest opposition is an example of cognitive warfare, in line with Chinese ideology.
By spreading fearmongering notions of waking up to find landmines in Taiwan, or that children could easily step on them when they go to the beach, pro-China supporters feign to look out for the public interest, while withholding important information such as that the landmines would only be deployed as a last resort and only if an invasion occurs.
Their conflating of traditional, dangerous anti-personnel landmines used during the Second Taiwan Strait Crisis with the anti-tank mines in question is illogical and ignores that the two have different objectives. The hidden agenda behind these supporters is questionable.
The M136 system is defensive in nature. Taiwan would not need to procure landmines if China was not threatening it with military force in the first place, which reveals the victim-blaming mindset of pro-China supporters. Although war is to be prevented at all costs, if it were to occur, the volcano system would make Taiwan a tough nut to crack, slow down the enemy’s advance and buy the armed forces time to retaliate with concentrated power. As one of the most essential and low-cost weapons for conducting “David vs Goliath” asymmetrical warfare, the system would strengthen land defense in addition to air and naval defenses, which would increase the difficulty of a Chinese invasion.
By opposing the sale based on feigned humanistic concern for Taiwanese, pro-China supporters are cruel to the army, and sympathetic to the PLA and its facilitation of an invasion. This latest controversy has been a trial of the public’s political literacy and judgement — the public cannot afford to let its guard down regarding disinformation.
Could Asia be on the verge of a new wave of nuclear proliferation? A look back at the early history of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which recently celebrated its 75th anniversary, illuminates some reasons for concern in the Indo-Pacific today. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin recently described NATO as “the most powerful and successful alliance in history,” but the organization’s early years were not without challenges. At its inception, the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty marked a sea change in American strategic thinking. The United States had been intent on withdrawing from Europe in the years following
My wife and I spent the week in the interior of Taiwan where Shuyuan spent her childhood. In that town there is a street that functions as an open farmer’s market. Walk along that street, as Shuyuan did yesterday, and it is next to impossible to come home empty-handed. Some mangoes that looked vaguely like others we had seen around here ended up on our table. Shuyuan told how she had bought them from a little old farmer woman from the countryside who said the mangoes were from a very old tree she had on her property. The big surprise
The issue of China’s overcapacity has drawn greater global attention recently, with US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen urging Beijing to address its excess production in key industries during her visit to China last week. Meanwhile in Brussels, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen last week said that Europe must have a tough talk with China on its perceived overcapacity and unfair trade practices. The remarks by Yellen and Von der Leyen come as China’s economy is undergoing a painful transition. Beijing is trying to steer the world’s second-largest economy out of a COVID-19 slump, the property crisis and
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) trip to China provides a pertinent reminder of why Taiwanese protested so vociferously against attempts to force through the cross-strait service trade agreement in 2014 and why, since Ma’s presidential election win in 2012, they have not voted in another Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidate. While the nation narrowly avoided tragedy — the treaty would have put Taiwan on the path toward the demobilization of its democracy, which Courtney Donovan Smith wrote about in the Taipei Times in “With the Sunflower movement Taiwan dodged a bullet” — Ma’s political swansong in China, which included fawning dithyrambs