Military exercises are a means to ensure troop readiness and improve coordination. They are theory put into practice and a mechanism to see where improvement is needed. For many soldiers, exercises are the closest they will ever get to actual combat.
Given the high costs involved in large-scale exercises and the amount of planning that goes into them, military strategists take into consideration two variables: threat and risk assessments. A threat assessment determines the nature of a threat to national security — from cyber-attacks to terrorism. Risk assessments, on the other hand, determine the likelihood of a potential attack and how detrimental it would be to the well-being of the nation.
Through these, a matrix can be created to isolate the likeliest threats and those that would be most damaging, which also helps governments allocate resources to where they are needed most.
It is therefore puzzling that on Sunday the government would choose to hold an anti-terror exercise at sea in Kaohsiung in lieu of the traditional live-fire drills simulating a Chinese attack.
The threat of terrorism in the waters off Taiwan is quite low. The motivation to target Taiwanese shipping isn’t there; the Taiwan Strait is not the Strait of Malacca. Furthermore, in terms of potential damage to the national interest, the hijacking of an oil tanker — the scenario in this weekend’s exercise — ranks rather low.
President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said after the exercise that “reconciliation” in the Taiwan Strait meant that Taiwanese “no longer need to spend time worrying about war” with China, which ostensibly translated into the military no longer having to prepare for that contingency. The problem with this, however, is that in spite of warming ties between Taiwan and China, a military attack by China remains the likeliest threat to Taiwanese security and the one that would have the most serious consequences for the survival of the nation. It is the responsibility of the military to prepare and train for the likeliest scenario.
Sunday’s exercise, which was preceded by an equally risible computer war game last week, was not a serious affair. It was theater, turning a necessary tool through which soldiers develop important skills into a political signal to two audiences. It was meant to tell Taiwanese that Ma’s cross-strait policy is working — so quickly, in fact, that a mere year after he stepped into office, Taiwan no longer needed to prepare for war with China. It was also a signal to Beijing that Ma doesn’t take the threat of invasion seriously. Given that China has yet to reciprocate Taiwan’s military drawdown and has shown no sign that it will abandon its own military exercises simulating an invasion of Taiwan, Ma’s message could be interpreted as capitulation.
This is not to say that the Taiwanese military should not prepare for contingencies other than a Chinese invasion, and in that regard Sunday’s exercise is valid. But a military that constantly complains about budget constraints should allocate its precious resources to prepare for the likeliest threats.
Ma has no crystal ball. He doesn’t know what will happen. Given the problematic relationship between Taiwan and China, there are bound to be phases of deterioration in cross-strait relations. It’s even possible that in 2012 the Ma government will be replaced by a pro-independence party. As such, any president who takes national defense seriously would ensure that, regardless of future developments, the nation will retain the capability to defend itself.
That means planning and training for an invasion by China, live fire and all.
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,
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