Washington’s need to defend Taiwan from a Chinese attack is greater today than it was 30 years ago, a leading US military strategist said on Tuesday.
“Taiwan is everything we preach about — it is what we want other countries to be,” said Thomas McNaugher, director of studies at Georgetown University’s Center for Security Studies.
Invading Taiwan would be an “extremely dicey” operation, McNaugher told an Atlantic Council discussion titled “Conflict in the Taiwan Strait?”
Amphibious assaults are very tough and China does not have any particular experience in that area, he said.
Rather than a direct attack, Beijing might try a blockade if it decided to force unification, he said.
However, a blockade would take a lot of time to enforce and that would allow US power to build up “pretty effectively,” he said.
McNaugher said that China’s military buildup has been very effective and comprehensive, and Beijing was continuing to make “steady, relentless progress.”
He said the US still had an edge in the conventional balance of power, but that “we have entered that fuzzy area where there is a lot of uncertainty about how this would go.”
In case of an attack, US intervention would depend on how the hostilities started, McNaugher said.
“Taiwan is a raucous democracy; they even have fist fights in the legislature. It has a great economy with great human rights,” he said. “If we were to let Taiwan go to a rapacious and naked Chinese attack, not only would it destroy the global economy, it would undermine our credibility.”
On the other hand, if a war started because Taiwan “promotes it,” there would be a real question about US support, he said.
The message to the Taiwanese was that in case of a conflict with China they had to be the victims and not the promoters, he said.
One way for Taiwan to avoid an attack would be for it to “very visibly” build up its ability to defend itself and increase the level of deterrence, he said.
In related news, Walter Lohman, director of the Asian Studies Center at the Washington-based Heritage Foundation, said in a new paper that the US should clarify its support for Taiwan.
As “carefully and responsibly” as president-elect Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) might approach relations with China, they nevertheless fundamentally rejected Beijing’s dream of ultimate unification, and this would remain an underlying source of tension as long as the DPP remains in power, he wrote.
US President Barack Obama’s administration should establish “unwavering support” for Taiwan’s security and prerogative in determining its own future, Lohman said.
“To this end, the administration should facilitate new arms sales, or, failing this, at least begin building interagency consensus and support on Capitol Hill and Taipei to facilitate approval early in 2017,” he wrote.
“New fighter jets and diesel-electric submarines should be at the top of the list,” he added.
The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday said it is fully aware of the situation following reports that the son of ousted Chinese politician Bo Xilai (薄熙來) has arrived in Taiwan and is to marry a Taiwanese. Local media reported that Bo Guagua (薄瓜瓜), son of the former member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, is to marry the granddaughter of Luodong Poh-Ai Hospital founder Hsu Wen-cheng (許文政). The pair met when studying abroad and arranged to get married this year, with the wedding breakfast to be held at The One holiday resort in Hsinchu
The Taipei Zoo on Saturday said it would pursue legal action against a man who was filmed climbing over a railing to tease and feed spotted hyenas in their enclosure earlier that day. In videos uploaded to social media on Saturday, a man can be seen climbing over a protective railing and approaching a ledge above the zoo’s spotted hyena enclosure, before dropping unidentified objects down to two of the animals. The Taipei Zoo in a statement said the man’s actions were “extremely inappropriate and even illegal.” In addition to monitoring the hyenas’ health, the zoo would collect evidence provided by the public
‘SIGN OF DANGER’: Beijing has never directly named Taiwanese leaders before, so China is saying that its actions are aimed at the DPP, a foundation official said National Security Bureau (NSB) Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) yesterday accused Beijing of spreading propaganda, saying that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had singled out President William Lai (賴清德) in his meeting with US President Joe Biden when talking about those whose “true nature” seek Taiwanese independence. The Biden-Xi meeting took place on the sidelines of the APEC summit in Peru on Saturday. “If the US cares about maintaining peace across the Taiwan Strait, it is crucial that it sees clearly the true nature of Lai and the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in seeking Taiwanese independence, handles the Taiwan question with extra
A road safety advocacy group yesterday called for reforms to the driver licensing and retraining system after a pedestrian was killed and 15 other people were injured in a two-bus collision in Taipei. “Taiwan’s driver’s licenses are among the easiest to obtain in the world, and there is no mandatory retraining system for drivers,” Taiwan Vision Zero Alliance, a group pushing to reduce pedestrian fatalities, said in a news release. Under the regulations, people who have held a standard car driver’s license for two years and have completed a driver training course are eligible to take a test
RSS