In the past 72 hours, US Senators Roger Wicker, Dan Sullivan and Ruben Gallego took to social media to publicly rebuke the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) over the defense budget. I understand that Taiwan’s head is on the chopping block, and the urgency of its security situation cannot be overstated.
However, the comments from Wicker, Sullivan and Gallego suggest they have fallen victim to a sophisticated disinformation campaign orchestrated by an administration in Taipei that treats national security as a partisan weapon.
The narrative fed to our allies claims the opposition is slashing the defense budget to kowtow to the Chinese Communist Party. The voting record proves otherwise. Last year, under a KMT-plurality legislature, Taiwan passed a record-breaking national defense budget of NT$471 billion (US$14.7 billion). The KMT-led majority applied a surgical 1.01 percent cut — the smallest reduction in nearly a decade. Had the KMT intended to sabotage Taiwan’s security, that record-high budget would never even have left the committee room.
The critique from Washington ignores a glaring logistical reality: Taiwan is not waiting for the “will” to pay; it is waiting for the goods it has already purchased. The backlog of US arms that Taiwan has already paid for now exceeds US$21 billion. From F-16Vs to Harpoon missiles, Taipei has fulfilled its end of the contract again and again, yet the docks remain empty.
“Slow is smooth and smooth is fast.” A defense strategy rushed through by bypassing democratic norms is and would remain a liability. What the opposition scrutinizes is not “defense” in and of itself, but a NT$1.25 trillion administrative blank check. This special budget for asymmetric warfare was announced in a foreign newspaper before it was ever presented to the Taiwanese. It represents a planless, unaccountable pot of gold that seeks to throw more money at a procurement system already choked by a US$21 billion bottleneck. Piling more orders onto an existing mountain of undelivered weapons is a fiscal fantasy. It prioritizes future shopping lists while the administration in Taipei simultaneously declares pay raises for the very soldiers tasked with defending its shores today unconstitutional and its future soldiers, at the current recruitment rate, are nowhere to be found.
Wicker, Sullivan and Gallego are known for their commitment to fiscal transparency and responsibility in Washington. They would not tolerate a US president leaking a massive, multi-year spending hike to the international press in an attempt to bypass the “power of the purse” in Congress, especially while existing orders remained unfilled. Endorsing such anti-democratic, anti-accountability activities in Taipei ignores the principles of legislative oversight they champion at home. By name-dropping the KMT, these senators have unwittingly assisted the Lai administration’s strategy of foreign-managed domestic politics.
Taiwan is paying for its survival. The legislature refuses to be treated as an ATM for performative diplomacy. Real “peace through strength” requires more than just buying high-profile items made of steel; it requires the strength of democratic institutions and principled leaders.
If our allies in the US Senate want to see a stronger Taiwan, they should stop lecturing the party that actually passed the record defense budget and start asking why the Lai administration is so afraid of legislative transparency. A defense plan that cannot survive the scrutiny of its own legislature is nothing more than a public relations stunt. Taiwan’s security is too urgent to afford spending time on smoke and mirrors. Help Taiwan to maintain a democracy worth defending.
What is unacceptable in Washington should never be acceptable in Taipei.
Howard Shen served as the foreign press secretary for the KMT’s 2024 presidential campaign.
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