The Ministry of National Defense has run its first ever wargame for President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) and other political leaders here to test their ability to respond to a military assault from China.
For a week in April, Chen, Premier Su Tseng-chang(
Among the findings: Taiwan could fend off China for two weeks, despite Beijing's continuing military buildup, before Taipei would need help from the US. Under the Taiwan Relations Act, often cited by the Bush administration as the basis for the US posture on Taiwan, the US would be obliged in most circumstances to come to Taiwan's aid.
"We could defend our country by ourselves for at least two weeks if we were attacked by the PRC [the People's Republic of China]," said Abe Lin (
Bush administration officials have been in what one called "a grumpy mood" toward Taipei for what they have seen as Chen's provocative posture toward China and Taipei's failure to complete an US$18 billion arms purchase from the US.
Moreover, Bush officials have suggested that Taiwanese are unwilling to defend themselves and rely too much on the US to prevent Taiwan from being seized by China.
When an American visitor brought up these perceptions, Lin protested: "That's not fair. It is not fair to say that we are not willing to defend ourselves."
Civilian officials and military officers in the meeting vigorously agreed with Lin.
Moreover, Lin asserted, "We have never thought that we would get a free ride from the US. We have never planned to rely only on US forces in our defense."
Lin and his colleagues pointed to the lessons learned from the wargame; to Taiwan's first comprehensive national security strategy report, issued last month; to increases planned for defense spending; to forthcoming cuts in military personnel to free funds for investment in weapons; and to a national mobilization law adopted in 2004.
They said, however, Taiwan needed to "harden" more of its communications apparatus. The security report called for setting up a hotline between Taipei and Beijing to preclude miscalculation.
The legislature must approve increases in defense spending from 2.4 percent of GDP next year to 3 percent in 2009. (US defense spending is about 4 percent of GDP.) The armed forces will be reduced to 275,000 from 295,000 by 2008.
If China attacked, Lin said, "We would need to sustain ourselves politically, militarily, economically, and psychologically. The psychological may be the weakest part. I wonder how much our people could suffer."
Polls suggest that Taiwanese are eager, maybe even desperate to avoid war with China. A survey by the Mainland Affairs Council found that 88.6 percent of Taiwanese wanted the status quo to continue. Only a few chose either independence, which would provoke China into an attack, or unification with China.
Against this backdrop, the US Pacific Command in Hawaii has quietly strengthened US military ties with Taiwan. At the same time, Admiral William Fallon, the command's leader, has been executing the Bush administration's policy of engaging China by having Chinese officers visit US forces and US officers travel to China.
Retired Admiral Dennis Blair, a former Pacific commander, has come to Taiwan once a year for the last several years to offer advice during a large Taiwanese military exercise. Defense attaches at the American Institute in Taiwan are serving officers now rather than retired officers on contract. Pacific Command officers regularly visit to confer with counterparts.
Even so, military officers and defense officials in Hawaii expressed misgivings about the US engagement with China, saying they feared the US might succumb to Chinese pressure or cajolery.
"We support Admiral Fallon's policy of engagement," said an admiral, "so long as it is not at our expense."
The chief spokesman for Fallon, Navy Captain W. Jeffrey Alderson, addressed that issue. In response to a query, he said: "No one loses here. Our efforts at engagement and transparency are intended to avoid miscalculations and thus maintain peace and stability in the region."
Richard Halloran is a writer based in Hawaii.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅?萁) has caused havoc with his attempts to overturn the democratic and constitutional order in the legislature. If we look at this devolution from the context of a transition to democracy from authoritarianism in a culturally Chinese sense — that of zhonghua (中華) — then we are playing witness to a servile spirit from a millennia-old form of totalitarianism that is intent on damaging the nation’s hard-won democracy. This servile spirit is ingrained in Chinese culture. About a century ago, Chinese satirist and author Lu Xun (魯迅) saw through the servile nature of
In their New York Times bestseller How Democracies Die, Harvard political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt said that democracies today “may die at the hands not of generals but of elected leaders. Many government efforts to subvert democracy are ‘legal,’ in the sense that they are approved by the legislature or accepted by the courts. They may even be portrayed as efforts to improve democracy — making the judiciary more efficient, combating corruption, or cleaning up the electoral process.” Moreover, the two authors observe that those who denounce such legal threats to democracy are often “dismissed as exaggerating or
Monday was the 37th anniversary of former president Chiang Ching-kuo’s (蔣經國) death. Chiang — a son of former president Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), who had implemented party-state rule and martial law in Taiwan — has a complicated legacy. Whether one looks at his time in power in a positive or negative light depends very much on who they are, and what their relationship with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is. Although toward the end of his life Chiang Ching-kuo lifted martial law and steered Taiwan onto the path of democratization, these changes were forced upon him by internal and external pressures,
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus in the Legislative Yuan has made an internal decision to freeze NT$1.8 billion (US$54.7 million) of the indigenous submarine project’s NT$2 billion budget. This means that up to 90 percent of the budget cannot be utilized. It would only be accessible if the legislature agrees to lift the freeze sometime in the future. However, for Taiwan to construct its own submarines, it must rely on foreign support for several key pieces of equipment and technology. These foreign supporters would also be forced to endure significant pressure, infiltration and influence from Beijing. In other words,
RSS