Military service is going to be extended next year, with pious invocations of the China threat and military weakness as its excuse. “Insufficient manpower in the military is one of the reasons for extending military service,” Minister of National Defense Chiu Kuo-cheng (邱國正) argued last week, noting that the threat from China had become more severe.
The plan calls for young men to do a year of military service, up from the current four months. A signal, we are told by commentators, that Taiwan is getting serious about defense.
This is wonderful. In the current program, it means that the young men of Taiwan can go from firing six bullets in their term of military service, to firing as many as 18!
Photo: Wu Cheng-ting, Taipei Times
No, sorry, a serious signal would be the formation of a potent, well-trained territorial defense force among males 18-55, with periodic weekend reserve practice in which actual weapons were fired, and realistically messy drills took place. Integrated, of course, with a government funded civil defense program that gave intensive training in caring for wounds, rescue, emergency construction and logistics.
This in turn buttressed by massive increases in weapons stocks, with consultation from foreign experts about how they should be stored to maximize access when needed, and dispersal from missile threats. Fortunately, the international media is reporting that the US is considering how to do this.
Sadly, the current policy revision is in reality a signal that the government is not serious about defense, that it is still searching for a policy that causes minimal disruption to Taiwanese life — just as it does with road building, electricity prices, new home construction, water prices, renewable energy, you name it. All sacrifices to the great god, convenience.
Photo: Liu Hsiao-hsin, Taipei Times
YOUNG PEOPLE NEEDED
Extending conscription means that nothing fundamental need change. It means that the construction-industrial state can churn on, subsidies slush downward, and that taxes won’t go up. The government is not muddling through, but merely marking time.
Meanwhile the government’s short-sighted population policies threaten the viability of even this feeble moue of a warlike gesture. According to a government news agency report, in 2011 there were less than 200,000 registered births. This year Taiwan has only 118,000 males to induct into military service, and that number will continue to fall.
Photo: Wei Chin-yun, Taipei Times
Opening up to immigration is vital to national security. We need more young people!
The influx of new conscripts next year offers a remarkable opportunity to not only train people in desperately needed skills, but also to shape the next generation of Taiwanese, especially if they start conscripting women.
Among the many things the government is doing right is inventorying our food and energy stocks. There was even media discussion of increasing natural gas shipments on Taiwan-flagged vessels, an idea that should be expanded. Given that international shipping cargo demand is slumping but ship makers are flooding their slipways with new vessels in the next few years, now might be a good time for Taiwan (and the US) to pick up new cargo and tanker ships at cheap rates, to stockpile them against the shipping demands of the coming war.
That may require that some of our territorial reservists be trained as seamen. Coincidentally, Taiwan’s shipping companies face crew shortages because the war has cut off the supply of Russian and Ukrainian staff. Perhaps an opportunity?
SMART FARMING AND RENEWABLES
Recent global inflation, especially the food price spikes, should be a wake-up call for Taiwan, a nation utterly dependent on food imports. Here is an island famed for its incredible array of technological and electronic capabilities, yet the government’s investments in hi-tech agriculture and smart farming, perfect for a future wartime food situation, have been miniscule.
Smart agriculture, where light, water and nutrient inputs are provided by computers, LEDs, solar power systems — all Taiwan-made — would be a great place to park a portion of the 100,000 or so conscripts to be called up next year. Many of them might find such work surprisingly congenial, leading to the establishment of new industries and businesses later in their lives.
Similarly, the war should remind us that transitioning and decentralizing the power grid to 100 percent renewables should be considered vital for national security. Ukraine’s experiences with the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant should be stimulating Taiwan to remove the spent fuel rods from its nuclear power plants and ship them off to Europe for reprocessing, and deactivate and remove the remaining reactors. They are simply too dangerous to have around in a Chinese invasion.
Training conscripts in infrastructure installation and repair using Taiwan-made solar panels is the kind of thing many future engineers and architects would enjoy.
Indeed, the experience of Ukraine foreshadows what will happen to Taiwan.
The fake Russian annexation referenda should remind us that the government needs to carry out comprehensive polling, and perhaps even non-binding referenda, on sovereignty, to help establish the moral basis for the war and make the feelings of the Taiwanese people clear to the world.
The contrast between Ukraine’s Eastern European neighbors and Taiwan’s Asian neighbors could not be more stark. As soon as Russia invaded Ukraine, its near neighbors all saw themselves as Ukraine in the future, with a Russian victory threatening them. They rallied to help Ukraine.
Meanwhile too many of Taiwan’s Asian neighbors still can’t believe an expansionist empire that is currently occupying two of its neighbors and demanding territory from most of them is a threat. The US is helping, with its recent moves on the Philippines, but Taiwan’s diplomacy needs to step up its game in southeast Asia.
The global response to Russia’s invasion is a reminder that the world is split, with many nations in the developing world supporting Russia. China is a major investor and job source in developing areas. Hence, another job for our diplomatic corps.
People-to-people exchanges could be enormously beneficial in these areas. Who better to make use of than Taiwan conscripts taking a gap year before college? A program that employs conscripts later in their service to help with disaster relief in neighboring countries could be an ideal way to train Taiwanese in the skills necessary for coping with wartime carnage, while raising Taiwan’s profile abroad.
The next crop of conscripts cannot be wasted doing the same “training program” that the four-month conscripts are currently doing. They need to receive training in skills the nation will need when the war begins.
After all, we are all Ukraine now, the young most of all.
Notes from Central Taiwan is a column written by long-term resident Michael Turton, who provides incisive commentary informed by three decades of living in and writing about his adoptive country. The views expressed here are his own.
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