Tue, Aug 23, 2016 page3

• Expert urges change in defense strategy on growing threats

  CHINA’s RISE: Richard Bush warned of Beijing shifting from negotiations to intimidation and of potential changes in the US’ security commitments

  • Staff writer, with CNA
  • • 
    • 
    • 

  An expert at the Washington-based Brookings Institution has advised that Taiwan change its defense strategy to adapt quickly to the growing and more complex security challenges posed by an improving Chinese military.

  China’s military capabilities have grown across the board, while Taiwan’s overall threat environment has deteriorated, Richard Bush, director of the institute’s Center for East Asia Policy Studies, said in a recent article.

  Titled “Taiwan’s Security Policy,” the article gave an overview of Taiwan’s historical security environment and central foreign policy strategies from the time of Japan’s invasion of Manchuria in the 1930s to the election of President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) in January.

  After the US established diplomatic relations with China in 1979, the strategic odds appeared to be very much against Taiwan, said Bush, a former chairman of the American Institute in Taiwan.

  “The island and its Republic of China government survived because the United States sustained more of a commitment to Taiwan’s defense than China expected and because the island’s leaders took policy steps to strengthen Taiwan’s relative position: opening business relations with the Mainland, upgrading the domestic economy and opening up the political system to ensure that the public had a veto over initiatives toward China it did not like,” Bush wrote.

  He said finding the right balance between engaging China and fortifying Taiwan’s defenses was not easy and each succeeding approach was a function of whoever was in power at the time.

  “Maintaining equilibrium between management of the politics of external policy while maintaining a good relationship with the United States has also been a challenge,” Bush said.

  However, Taiwan’s leaders have succeeded better than anyone might have expected in the early 1980s, in part because China’s leaders had some stake in good cross-strait relations and were willing to accommodate US policy — up to a point, he said.

  “Yet China has expanded its economic clout, political influence and military power,” Bush wrote. “The question is, whether these incremental improvements in China’s national power will at some point lead its leaders to abandon its relatively accommodative approach toward Taiwan of the past several decades. That could foster a qualitative change to Taiwan’s security.”

  He said the possibility that Beijing might lose patience with Taiwan’s reluctance to accept a political settlement through negotiations and might shift to a policy of intimidation has already been discussed.

  “Another concern has to do with the commitment of the United States to Taiwan’s security, which has always been an essential (if unstated) element of Taiwan’s strategy,” Bush wrote.

  He outlined two ways in which the US’ security commitment to Taiwan might shift over time and amid changing geopolitical conditions.

  First, the grand strategy could shift as the US prioritizes stable relations with an increasingly powerful China, which in turn might argue for reducing or ending the security commitment to Taiwan, Bush said.

  “The second way a significant change in Taiwan’s security situation could occur stems from changes in the military capabilities of China and the United States and, as a result, how a war in East Asia would be fought,” he said.

  Furthermore, Washington could reduce this capabilities race by withdrawing or scaling back its commitments to US allies and friends in the Western Pacific, Bush said.

  “Fortunately for Taiwan, neither of these fundamental changes has occurred, but they have begun to enter discussions surrounding US security policy,” he said.
• Most Popular

  • 1

    Taiwan shuts down as Krathon nears

  • 2

    Outer rim of Krathon reaches Taiwan

  • 3

    Taipei mayor defends typhoon holiday declaration

  • 4

    Storm kills one, work canceled for second day

  • 5

    How Japan’s humble onigiri took over lunchtimes around the world