“We are so disappointed in the United States,” a Taiwanese defense official said over the weekend, reacting to confirmation that Taipei would not be sold the F-16C/D aircraft it has been seeking from the US since 2007.
While the sense of disappointment with Washington is perfectly understandable, another actor in the saga deserves equal condemnation, if not more: the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT). It was the KMT, enjoying a majority in the legislature during then--president Chen Shui-bian’s (陳水扁) administration, that blocked the budgets that would have allowed Taiwan to continue modernizing its armed forces.
Two possible scenarios present themselves here. Either the KMT undermined Taiwan’s defense apparatus as part of a plan to demonstrate, when it regained office in 2008, that it was stronger on defense than its predecessor, only to be caught wrong-footed when the backlog reached more than US$12 billion. Or it knew all along that this would happen and proceeded by orchestrating a gradual erosion of the nation’s deterrent capability.
Either way, the end result is the same. Taiwan today finds itself in a very difficult position when it comes to its ability to defend itself against aggression from China.
Try as it might to signal strength and determination by talking about Taiwan’s new “aircraft carrier killer,” the fact is, advanced fighter aircraft remain a key component of national defense. Now that the Air Force will not be getting the 66 F-16C/Ds — which were intended to replace F-5s and Mirage 2000s that need to be decommissioned — not only will the force not be comprised of more modern aircraft, but it will have to be reduced in size, unless the nearly obsolete aircraft are kept in service.
When it comes to countering a Chinese attack, both qualitative and quantitative elements in the armed forces are important. As the opening round of a Chinese invasion would likely involve a missile attack against the country’s air bases, fewer aircraft to start with means fewer will survive an attack and be available for operations over the Taiwan Strait.
On the qualitative side, rumors that only one of the two wings of ageing F-16A/Bs are to be modernized also means that nearly half of what remains of the nation’s most advanced combat aircraft will very soon fall far behind the new models of aircraft being developed and deployed by the People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF). By some accounts, the PLAAF could have close to 1,000 3+, 4th and 4+ generation fighters and up to two 5th generation fighters entering production.
For the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) inept handling of the arms sales issue presents an opportunity as the two parties head into January’s presidential and legislative elections. This will be a chance for DPP Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) and her advisers to show that Ma’s “flexible” China policy and claim to better ties with the US have failed miserably. This will require more than recrimination, however, and the DPP camp will have to come up with viable alternatives for national defense, or a proposed change in approach with Washington.
Conversely, if the second scenario — that of a planned weakening of the military by the KMT — applies, this new situation could also provide the KMT with ammunition against the DPP. It could claim that because of US intransigence, a weakened Taiwan would be at greater risk under the DPP and that Taipei is left with little choice but to seek even closer relations with Beijing to avoid war.
Ironically for the US, the decision not to provide Taiwan with the weapons it needs to defend itself makes it more likely that in the event of war in the Taiwan Strait, it would have to send troops to defend the small democracy. Unless, of course, Washington has given up its role as a champion of liberty.
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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