Taiwan should step up its military professional training, organize specialized and realistic reserve force training, and improve intelligence accuracy to enhance national defense in the face of China’s accelerating military buildup and the potential of conflict in the Taiwan Strait, a US-China relations expert said.
Peter Mattis, president of the Jamestown Foundation, a Washington-based nonpartisan defense policy think tank, gave a speech titled “The Illusion of Stability in Taiwan” in an international conference on US-China relations in Taipei on Tuesday last week. The following day, he sat down with the Taipei Times to talk about China’s ambitions, Taiwan’s national defense preparedness and Taiwan-US relations.
In his speech, Mattis addressed what some perceive as a 2027 invasion date for China, based on comments made in March 2021 by then-US admiral Philip Davidson.
Photo: Chang Chia-ming, Taipei Times
Some local media reported that Mattis was saying that China was unlikely to attack by 2027, but he clarified to the Taipei Times that he meant it was an order from Beijing that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) be able to fight and win a conflict in the Strait by 2027.
“It was a readiness benchmark,” he said. “It wasn’t a ‘let’s be ready to invade’ or ‘let’s go do that.’ It was ‘be ready by this time.’”
However, it is concerning to see the rapid expansion of the PLA’s operations since 2022, such as the construction of more warehouses at ports of embarkation for an amphibious force, he said.
Improved PLA readiness is apparent in the quick deployment of units from garrisons and their participation in exercises hundreds of kilometers from where they are stationed with less warning, which is “a bigger warning problem to be paying attention to,” he added.
Compared with the quality intelligence collected by the US and its partners in the lead-up to Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the US and its partners have less knowledge of China, so they might not believe the early warning signs amid the PLA’s efforts to obfuscate its actions, he said.
In his speech and articles on the Strait, Mattis has been critical of Taiwan’s slow buildup of its national defense capabilities and using funds inefficiently, while failing to accurately track the PLA’s day-to-day activities in real time. He has also criticized some politicians for their lack of urgency in addressing the China threat.
To prepare for a potential threat, Taiwan must do four things, he said.
First, local polls suggest that most young Taiwanese would fight if they were called up, but most Taiwanese do not respect the military, which could stem from their personal experience during mandatory military service, which did not provide adequate combat training.
“There’s something wrong in the military if people don’t go in for a year or two and come out with something meaningful, let’s call it professional skill, that is recognized from the outside,” he said, adding that the one-year service should move the needle on a person’s desirability as an employee, such as a recognition of a certain kind of discipline or attitude toward getting things done.
Institutions must make plenty of changes to bring young people who would fight in line with respect for the institution, he said.
Second, given the limited size of Taiwan’s armed forces, the channeling of emergency services, police, firefighters and civil society into a military setting through “the reserve forces” is important to success, Mattis said.
“If you want to shoot a rifle with a high level of proficiency, you have to go out and you have to spend time ... going through several boxes of ammunition,” he said, adding that soldiers should be trained to have a specialization, such as in firearms, or anti-aircraft, electronic warfare or uncrewed systems.
Many sources have told him that the reserve forces do not get enough training, and that they are called upon to join reservist training in other cities and counties, but “you don’t want people reporting to their unit 150 miles [241km] away, you want them reporting to their [local] unit,” and “make sure that every city, every locality has something organized to come,” Mattis said.
Third, Taiwan must purchase enough weapons to ensure that thousands of people — including active-duty military and reserve forces — have trained with the systems and that everyone has used them several times to ensure readiness, he said.
In dealing with international partners, especially the US, Taiwan should consider getting a waiver or agreement to acquire a constant supply of ammunition to sustain realistic training, he said.
Last, Taiwan needs accurate intelligence and targeting capabilities, Mattis said.
The domestically made Hsiung Feng III (雄風三型, “Brave Wind III”) medium-range supersonic missile, which has extended targeting range, needs the intelligence and sensing capability to “hit what is desired to be hit,” he said.
While there is a fear in the US that Taiwan might start a war if it had long-range precision strike capabilities, that does not match Taiwan’s ambitions, he said.
However, if the PLA prepares to deploy ships and planes for an attack, it would be easier for Taiwan to strike them at ports and airfields in China, to jam up ports, damages facilities and ensure that embarkation points cannot be used again, rather than waiting to strike while they're at sea, Mattis said.
Regarding attempts by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators to hobble national defense budgets, he said a slide in the military began during former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) presidency from 2008 to 2016.
“Ma Ying-jeou repeatedly promised we [Taiwan] will have 3 percent GDP defense spending, and all we did was watch it slide,” he said, adding that his move to an “all-volunteer force” was unsuccessful and shortened conscription “to the point where it’s not useful.”
If KMT lawmakers have doubts over the domestic submarine project or believe taxpayers’ money are better used elsewhere, they should have a clear plan of where it should go, who it should be used, how to replenish the volunteer military force and how to change conscription rules, he said.
However, he said he has not seen a positive national defense policy from the KMT.
In remarks to the US Congress, Mattis suggested that Washington should better publicize what it is doing to protect Taiwan.
Asked if Taiwan should do more to inform Taiwanese about China’s actions, he said the government should consider it.
“There’s definitely the case on talking more frankly and clearly about what China is doing,” he said, adding that a president should have the right to speak to its people in their own words about national defense and preparing society for what could come, without concerns of whether the message would upset other countries.
The US has not always been supportive of Taiwanese presidents talking about national security, and people on the outside have questioned and criticized the Taiwan-US defense relationship, feeding “US abandonment narratives,” Mattis said.
“The proper balance has not been found of talking about sort of the level of cooperation [between Taiwan and the US] that is there,” and that “the lack of balance is feeding some of these concerns,” he said.
“I think that this is one where the US and Taiwan both have an interest in being a little more explicit about, a little more open about the kinds of things that are being done,” he said.
“The scope of the US-Taiwan relationship is stronger and bigger than government to government, than anyone really talks about, and I think it would be good to have more of that kind of thing out in the open,” he said.
It is also in the US’ interest to defend Taiwan and not let a democracy fall to an authoritarian system, he said.
Mattis was a senior fellow with the US House of Representatives Select Committee on Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party, and had previously worked as a counterintelligence analyst at the CIA, where he earned awards for analytic leadership and community support.
He became president of the Jamestown Foundation in 2023, after serving as the foundation’s editor of China Brief from 2011 to 2013, and as a fellow in the China program from 2013 to 2018.
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