Former US deputy national security advisor Matt Pottinger today commended President William Lai's (賴清德) recent pledge to raise military spending, calling it an important signal of Taiwan's commitment to self-defense.
At the Halifax International Security Forum in Taipei, Pottinger, who served in the role from 2019 to 2021 during US President Donald Trump's first presidency, spoke about Lai's pledge to propose a special budget plan to increase Taiwan's defense spending to more than 3 percent of GDP.
Photo: Liao Chen-huei, Taipei Times
Lai made the pledge, along with commitments to double down efforts on defense reforms and enhance civil protections, shortly after Trump accused Taiwan of "[taking] our chip business away" while again threatening tariffs on foreign semiconductors entering the US.
"It's really important as a signal to the United States and other countries about Taiwan's commitment to its defense," added Pottinger, who currently chairs the China Program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
Lai's pledged special budget, if successful, would bring Taiwan's defense expenditure on par with the US' share of GDP, Pottinger said.
Three percent "seems like a good bargain to me," considering Ukraine's current investment in its ongoing fights against Russian troops and the US' at the peak of the Cold War in the 1980s, he added.
Joining Pottinger at the HFX Taipei's talk were former US ambassador to South Korea Mark Lippert, former Ukrainian parliamentarian Hanna Hopko and Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Fan Yun (范雲).
Taiwan's annual defense spending has hovered between 2 and 2.5 percent of GDP since former president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) took office in 2016, but it has yet to surpass 3 percent.
It remains to be seen whether Lai's pledged defense increase, which would likely see Taipei purchasing more defense articles from Washington, would materialize because his party does not have a majority in the legislature and faces a strong backlash from the opposition.
For this fiscal year, the Cabinet initially earmarked NT$647 billion (US$19.76 billion) for the Ministry of National Defense, or 2.45 percent of GDP.
However, the final appropriation is still uncertain, after opposition lawmakers imposed several cuts and freezes at various stages of the budget review, some of which may have overlapped, leaving the executive branch to verify the final figures.
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