The US should consider helping Taiwan build an indigenous defense industry to boost its qualitative military edge (QME), amid rising threats from China, similar to what the US has done for Israel, a local defense academic wrote in an article.
Wu Tzu-li (吳自立), a researcher at the government-funded Institute for National Defense and Security Research, said in an article published on Friday by the institute’s journal, Defense Security Brief, that the long-standing US commitment to maintaining Israel’s QME forms a central pillar of the Jewish state’s security strategy.
US legislation passed in 2008 defined QME as “the ability to counter and defeat any credible conventional military threat from any individual state or possible coalition of states, or from non- state actors, while sustaining minimal damages and casualties, through the use of superior military means.”
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Such means should be “possessed in sufficient quantity, including weapons, command, control, communication, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities that in their technical characteristics are superior in capability to those of such other individual or possible coalition of states or non-state actors.”
Israel has a relatively small population and territory, but is surrounded by neighbors that remain hostile toward the country.
Understanding the dangers of this quantitative disadvantage, Israel has worked to ensure that the country develops a qualitative edge: the ability to defend itself through military superiority, by heavily investing in high-quality training and equipment, with help from the US, Wu said.
The US has provided Israel with foreign aid surpassing US$1.25 trillion, with almost all of it for military assistance, Wu said.
Israel now has one of the world’s strongest armed forces, a robust domestic defense industry and is one of the largest weapons exporters in the world, he said.
The US buys weapons from Israel on occasion, and is investing in Israel’s Iron Dome, a system that is meant to intercept incoming rockets, he added.
Taiwan also faces growing military coercion from the Chinese communist regime that has significant superiority in terms of military power, despite Taiwan substantially increasing its defense spending in the past few years, Wu said.
US lawmakers have addressed this issue, Wu said, citing the introduction of a bill to the US Senate earlier this month that would increase military aid to Taiwan to bolster the country’s defenses.
The Taiwan Deterrence Act, proposed by Republican Senators Jim Risch, Mike Crapo, Bill Hagerty, Mitt Romney, John Cornyn and Marco Rubio, seeks to authorize directing US$2 billion a year from the Foreign Military Financing program to Taiwan from 2023 to 2032.
Another bill proposed earlier this month by US Senator Josh Hawley, the Arm Taiwan Act of 2021, would allow the US to authorize US$3 billion annually from 2023 through 2027 to provide assistance to Taiwan’s government, such as equipment, training and other support.
However, the proposed legislation also adds that Taiwan should in return invest more in its self-defense capabilities, Wu said.
Wu has called on the US to help Taiwan boost its QME as it did with Israel, so that Taiwan could build a stronger domestic defense industry, as Israel has.
Doing so would help quicken Taiwan’s pace in developing self-defense capabilities, Wu said.
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